The Dialectics of Nostalgia.

Our times are characterized by political reaction, and nostalgia is often named as the affective culprit. Behind the rise of right-wing authoritarianism seems to lurk a nostalgia for an imagined past with stable hierarchies and homogenous communities. But even left-wing nostalgia for the post-war welfare state or the radical politics of the 60s and 70s is blamed for preventing us from developing radical, forward-looking political projects. In this talk, I challenge this commonsensical view of nostalgia as an affect that necessarily tethers us to the past. Rather than simply rejecting this feeling as conservative, or even distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nostalgia, I argue that we need to appreciate the phenomenology of nostalgia as the experience of historical loss. As the feeling of historical loss—an affect against the grain of history—nostalgia has thus always been an important driver of politics in a way that belies liberal narratives of history as the smooth unfolding of progressive potentials. Leaving these feelings to the political right risks leaving an important area of political-emotional contestation uncontested. Today’s manifestations of nostalgia, both on the right (for homogenous nation-states and heteronormative family structures) and the left (for the post-war welfare state), ultimately exhibit a longing for stability in a world of insecurity. A progressive political movement, rather than simply rejecting such longing as reactionary, needs to provide alternative political visions that can channel desires for stability and community while decoupling them from heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and statism.