Leiden University Student Repository

Krchnar, Pavol (2017)

Nostalgia: Bad Politics, or Productive Remembering

Bachelor thesis | International Studies (BA)

The omnipresence of references to nostalgia in contemporary culture confirms its popular reputation as the strongest drug. The nostalgia market is booming: from entertainment and business to politics. The very status of the emotion of affection for things past, however, remains a passionately contested notion on many fronts. What is there that can be said about the virtues of nostalgia? In brief, is nostalgia good or bad for us? I will approach these questions by exploring the answers already available in the academic discourses of psychology and historiography. There are two features particular to nostalgia: it is an emotion and it is concerned with the past; hence, psychology and historiography were selected here as the two disciplines most closely engaged with the said areas. The pool of studies from these two disciplines selected here represent strikingly opposing perspectives on nostalgia and thus an investigation of the viewpoints which they exemplify promises fertile learning...Show moreThe omnipresence of references to nostalgia in contemporary culture confirms its popular reputation as the strongest drug. The nostalgia market is booming: from entertainment and business to politics. The very status of the emotion of affection for things past, however, remains a passionately contested notion on many fronts. What is there that can be said about the virtues of nostalgia? In brief, is nostalgia good or bad for us? I will approach these questions by exploring the answers already available in the academic discourses of psychology and historiography. There are two features particular to nostalgia: it is an emotion and it is concerned with the past; hence, psychology and historiography were selected here as the two disciplines most closely engaged with the said areas. The pool of studies from these two disciplines selected here represent strikingly opposing perspectives on nostalgia and thus an investigation of the viewpoints which they exemplify promises fertile learning grounds.Show less

nostalgia

psychology

historiography

modernity

history

language

Author

Krchnar, Pavol

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Supervisors

Duijn, Max van

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en