All of us remember a time or place charged with nostalgia, that misty emotion of longing for things past.
Nostalgia is less memory, though, than fantasy-an idealization of the past that, Svetlana Boym says in her new book, can demean the present and hold it hostage. She argues we’re besotted with nostalgia, plagued with it, as we leave the 20th century, with its Gilligan’s Islands and its Guadalcanals behind us. From Jurrasic Park, to the latest Disney animation, to Titanic, to the “Greatest Generation” World War Two best-sellers of Tom Brokaw and Stephan Ambrose, the nostalgia industry has got our number.
Nostalgia is a marketing miracle, and also a dictator’s dream, as the Balkan horrors have recently shown. Nostalgia can lend a sentimental alloy to nationalism and a rosy hue to group hatred. The past, the present, and the Future of Nostalgia.
(Hosted by David Ropeik)
Guests:
Svetlana Boym, author of “The Future of Nostalgia” and professor of comparative literature at Harvard University.