-
Mere Nostalgia: Notes on a Progressive Paratheory
- Rhetoric & Public Affairs
- Michigan State University Press
- Volume 3, Number 4, Winter 2000
- pp. 505-527
- 10.1353/rap.2000.0019
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
The recent trend of using nostalgia as a neutral analytic device overlooks its roots in progressive ideology. Invented during the nineteenth century as an explanation for resistance to modernization, nostalgia remains a key concept in the political conflict over modernity. The concept is thus ideologically charged, representing progressive responses to the questions of whether and whose memory is a reliable basis for political action and what kinds of desires and harms are politically relevant.