1. Present Dealing with the ∧ Past
Museum of Communism, Prague
Present Dealing with the ∧ Past
History & Nostalgia

2. History, Memory, Nostalgia
Does ‘History’ = ‘the past’?
History as ‘Grand Narrative’
E.g.: ‘triumph of capitalist modernity and liberal democracy’
‘History is written by the victors’?

3. Memory vs ‘Grand Narratives’?
Memory as personal and subjective vs official and objective; capable of disrupting official grand narratives, countering a universalizing History?
But: official memory (public commemorations, museums, even history textbooks); collective memory (‘prosthetic’ memory); ‘regimes of memory’?

4. Nostalgia vs Memory?
Nostalgia: ‘longing for a home that no longer exists, or has never existed… a sentiment of loss or displacement’ (Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia)
Not so much a place but a time (and an emotion): ‘longing for a past that no longer exists’…
A different relationship to History’s Grand Narratives?
More personal, more subjective, less official?

5. Postsocialist Nostalgia and Politics
Nostalgia as a political phenomenon: much observed and debated post-1989
‘Ostalgie’
Marxism pizzeria, Budapest ‘Ostel’, Berlin
Retrograde? Desire to restore communism? Romanticize past?

6. Rom Ciocolata – strong sensations
…since 1964

7. 2009 ad campaign on Romanian TV: ‘Strong sensations since 1964’/’Strong Romanian sensations’
Context: No lustration? Authoritarian govt? Skinheads vs hippies? 2007 EU enlargement? Globalization?
It may be ‘East European’ but at least it’s ours….

8. ‘Grand narratives’ of 1989 (and ‘dealing with the past’)
1989 as rupture, as an aberration
Emphasis on change: condemnation, lustration, bracketing the past (museums?)

9. ‘Grand narratives’ of 1989 (and ‘dealing with the past’)
1989 as a restored continuity (‘return to Europe’)
Emphasis on long-term continuities: ignore post-’45 past, ‘amnesia’

10. Problems of strategies of history
The scandals of post-1945 continuity
Denial of [positive] memories and [personal] achievements
Failure to live up to ’89’s
promises of change:
modernity, Westernization,
prosperity, etc.

11. Nostalgia and political critique?
Nostalgia as not just backward-looking; a critique of the present? Voicing the anger /
discontent of those cheated
of the promises of 1989 –
modernity, return to Europe?

12. Nostalgia and political critique?
Political critique… or just capitalism in action? ‘Consumer-nostalgia’ as a parody of the socialist economies of shortage?
If History = the State,
does Nostalgia = Society?
McCann Erickson
& Rom Ciocolata
‘We offer you everything, even the market’s Opposite!’

13. Nostalgia and critique?

14. Nostalgia and critique?
Bulg CP hdqtrs – wistful contemplation of ruins of the futre; Warsaw neon, presevation of achievements (vs capitalist adverts)

15. Nostalgia and critique
Looking beyond consumer-nostalgia & commodification of the past:
Post-socialist nostalgia and political critique: longing for a lost Golden Age (security, stability … optimism)? For unrealized dreams of the future? For east European self- determination? For … alternatives to History?

16. Alternatives to ‘History’: Stasiuk
Geography vs [Official] History?
[Regional similarities vs national histories]
Memory vs [Official] History?
Memory preserves (almost) non-canonical
histories that History would forget completely:
Jakub Szela (memory = histories from below)
Nostalgia vs [Official] History?
[Animals & the pre-modern;
resistance to modernity]
[Consumer]nostalgia?
State vs society?
EE on own terms

17. Problems with ‘Nostalgia’?
Is ‘nostalgia’ peculiar to post-socialist Eastern Europe?
Tendency to be dismissive of manifestations of ‘longing for a past that no longer exists’ (esp in consumer forms: v. Rom ciocolata)
Is ‘nostalgia’ simply a derisive label for critique of the collateral costs of modernity; a means of brushing aside [lower-case] history as written by the losers?