Arab Literary Travels

Definition: Nostalgia

In The Future of Nostalgia, author Svetlana Boym alerts us that “contrary to our intuition, the word nostalgia came from medicine” (Boym,1). Boym states that nostalgia was first coined in the medical dissertation of the Swiss doctor Johannes Hofer in 1688 (Beck, 1). Hofer posits that “from the force of the sound Nostalgia to define the sad mood originating from the desire for return to one’s native land” (Boym, 1). Hofer offers us ideas such as “sad mood” and “desire for return” in his prototypical definition which continue to direct modern interpretations of the concept of nostalgia. Boym begins an etymological analysis of nostalgia with the two greek roots: nostos interpreted as “return”, and algos as "longing" (Boym, 4). In contrast, Milan Kundera in Ignorance agrees with Boym when she interprets nostos as “return”, but presents algos to mean "suffering" (Kundera, 15). Kundera defines nostalgia as “the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return” (Kundera, 15). The use of “suffering” by Kundera conjures agony in a way that exceeds Hofer’s “sad mood” or Boym’s “longing”.

In The Odyssey by Homer, Odysseus’ anecdotal journey exemplifies Kundera’s idea of suffering from the desire to return to one’s homeland. Odysseus is absent from Ithaca for 20 years, plagued by the Trojan War, meddling of the God’s and Calypso (Homer). Yet, Odysseus’ return to Ithaca is one of “nonrecognition” and ignorance (Boym, 10).  Kundera maps the etymological origin of the element of ignorance through the spanish verb añorar, from the catalan enyorar, which is derived from the latin ignorare (Kundera, 16). Upon returning to Ithaca, Odysseus fails to recognize his homeland, and his homeland fails to recognize him (Homer). Despite Homer’s glorification of nostalgia, Odysseus’ return is largely reminiscent of Kundera’s painful ignorance. Ignorance through the lens of nostalgia reveals the inherently deceitful nature of one’s memory. As time progresses, nostalgia clouds the senses thickly, much like Odysseus’ midst, until memory becomes history, and nostalgia becomes ignorance. Therefore, it is important to consider the temporal dislocation of nostalgia when discussing Kundera’s “painful ignorance” and Boym’s “longing”.

Nostalgia possesses a gradient quality on a time scale; nostalgia is longing in the immediate post-displacement, but after years it becomes ignorance. While compelling, the gradient nature of nostalgia is the facile observation, whereas the abstruse task is identifying the transition. Unfortunately, the transition from longing to ignorance is contingent upon a specific political, social, and historical context, making it nearly impossible to extract. Consequently, these sociological factors can also undermine Kundera’s idea of nostalgia as “suffering”. Boym expands the notion of nostalgia to encompass affirmative emotion through “pop nostalgia” and capitalist manipulation (Boym, 51). While “pop nostalgia” is often associated with affirmative emotion, it still carries ignorance redolent of the colloquial adage ‘ignorance is bliss’. Boym utilizes the example of Jurassic Park to illustrate a German form of nostalgia Sehnsucht: “the desire for an absent thing” whether it has or has not existed (Boym, 51)(Kundera, 16). In the context of entertainment, nostalgia is capitalized to sell the “sensitive” or “man-eating” dinosaur, the science-fiction that pervades hollywood cinema, and to aggrandize contentious history. The consumer suspends belief, welcomes ignorance, and consumes notions of grandeur that are fed to it. The adverse, yet related, nature of “pop nostalgia” to the previous ignorant and ardent nostalgia begs the question: what are the many facets of nostalgia and is there a way to define them? It seems that the present ambiguity of nostalgia is inescapable leading one to believe that infinitely many forms of nostalgia exist for the individual.



Works Cited
Beck, Julie. "When Nostalgia Was A Disease." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 14 Aug. 2013. Web. 11 Feb. 2016.
Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic, 2001. Print.
Hofer, Johannes. Dissertatio Medica de nostalgia. 1688. Online.
Homer, and E. V. Rieu. The Odyssey. Baltimore: Penguin, 1946. Print.
Kundera, Milan, and Linda Asher. Ignorance. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Print.
 

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