The Temporalities of Habsburg Nostalgia

This introductory essay reflects on the temporal and spatial displacements that characterize nostalgia for the Habsburg Empire around the time of its demise and into the current age. Theories of nationalism and the modern nation have taken into account the affective pull of the nation, its ability to inspire a deep sentiment resembling religious feeling in its citizens. But how do we understand the emotional pull of empire? If patriotic sentiment can be linked to a pseudo-religious longing to be part of a unified national body, then how do we understand the love of the Habsburg Empire articulated in particular in the wake of the demise of this body and continuing far beyond its death? The longing for a pre-national state cuts across the grain of contemporary theories of nation. It is informed by our understanding of the vicissitudes of modernity and, in particular, a longing for a mode of being in the world that presumably preceded the homogeneous, linear time of the nation. The essay situates the contributions that follow it theoretically and historically, marking the fractured emotions for the dying or former empire as indicative of far more than a simply regressive idealization of a politically impoverished past.