nostalgia

is a sadness without an object. It is always ideological because the past it seeks has never existed except as narrative, and hence, continually threatens to reproduce itself as a felt lack.

Nostalgia is a sadness without an object, a sadness which creates alonging that of necessity is inauthentic because it does not take part inlived experience. Rather, it remains behind and before that experience. Nostalgia, like any form of narrative, is always ideological: the past itseeks has never existed except as narrative, and hence, always absent,that past continually threatens to reproduce itself as a felt lack.

Susan Stewart

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Susan Stewart