Svetlana Boyum

quotes The future of Nostalgia 

"The twentieth century began with a futuristic utopia, and ended with nostalgia."

"The fantasies of the past, determined by the needs of the present, have a direct impact on the realities of the future".

"Boym distinguishes two types of nostalgia. "Reflective nostalgia," while grounded in longing, contemplating, and remembering, does not attempt to restore the past. "You don’t deny your longing, but you reflect on it somehow," she says. "It’s a positive force that helps us explore our experience, and can offer an alternative to an uncritical acceptance of the present."

In contrast, Boym sees danger in "restorative nostalgia," which "is not about memory and history but about heritage and tradition. It’s often an inventedtradition—a dogmatic, stable myth that gives you a coherent version of the past. Generally it’s far removed in time, even prehistoric, as in the German myths that Wagner used for his operas."

"While restorative nostalgia returns and rebuilds one homeland with paranoic determination, reflective nostalgia fears return with the same passion." 

"Contemporary nostalgia is not so much about the past as about vanishing the present.” 


"nostalgia goes beyond individual psychology. At first glance, nostalgia is a longing for a place, but actually it is a yearning for a different time - the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams. In a broader sense, nostalgia is a rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress. The nostalgic desires to obliterate history and turn it into a private or collective mythology, to revisit time like space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition.”