Nostalgia and Memory

Question 1

According to Hobsbawm, the past is a model for what?

Answer 1

As a “model for reconstructing [the unsatisfactoy nature of the present] in a satisfactory form” 1997

Question 2

What does Hobsbawm note about politcal movement and people worldwide?

Answer 2

That both groups tend to define Utopia as nostalgia

Question 3

How can postmodernism be characterised?

Answer 3

1) Fragmantation, alienation, insecurity or the fleeting nature of contemporary experience
2) The blurring of the boundaries between reality and fiction (as outlined by Baudrillard)
3) The collapse of time and space, as history is no longer experienced as linear or a progression, but rather as singular events without context
4) Culture is intensified by the media and a thriving consumer context

Question 4

How is the past seen as part of contemporary culture?

Answer 4

Nostalgia is embedded in the fabric of postmodern culture

Question 5

What are potential reasons that nostalgia is thought to be embedded in the fabric of postmodern culture?

Answer 5

1) One theory is that it correlates to the collapse of the grand narratives
2) The invalidation or irrelevance of modern institutions once held in high regard, such as the monarchy, church or state
3) The past is a highly marketable entity, which leads to the exploitation of this fact by corporations
4) Acceleration of media and technology

Question 6

Which level of simulation does Baudrillard view nostalgia as?

Answer 6

The third order - relating to the masking of the absence of a profound reality

Question 7

What are some of the characteristics of nostalgia as a simulation?

Answer 7

1) Mediation of the past occurs. There is some slight reference to ‘the real’ but this is only through simulation
2) Historical signifiers can be found, but they are without any real reference (Tranquility - a North East simulation of the Wild West, obviously there are no real references within this)
3) The heritage industry presenting the past as a simulated experience. This can be tied to hyperreality, as it represents a world that does not have any real origin
4) Leads to the consumption of historical signs rather than learning or connecting to real history

Question 8

How does Baudrillard view simulacra?

Answer 8

As being inspired by the real/an original, but creating and sustaining their own realities

Question 9

What are historical simulacra?

Answer 9

Places that are supposed to represent the past that can be visited by people who want to ‘experience’ life in previous times. They can include tours, exhibitions, or shops containing goods that may be reproductions of goods at the time, or be of associated themes. There is also a belief that the consumption of images and products of this nature invoke a sense of historical memory. This memory could be ‘real’ or constructed, but would have equivocal meaning in the mind of the consumer

Question 10

What is cultural schizophrenia?

Answer 10

A term that Jameson coined to describe the phenomenon of postmodern individuals being unable to engage with a linear temporality (perception of the past, present and future), instead experiencing a perpetual present.

Question 11

What is the consequence of cultural schizophrenia?

Answer 11

Individuals are no longer able to relate to history in any other way than as a series of outmoded styles.

Question 12

In the media-saturated world, history becomes what?

Answer 12

A sort of phantasy

Question 13

What is Frederic Jameson’s definition of phantasy, in historical terms?

Answer 13

He sees history as being a construct, based on a series of mediated images from the past. These images are idealised, nostalgic and superficial, resulting in the fetishiised replacement of history

Question 14

What is a good quote for Jameson’s view of history as phantasy?

Answer 14

“Our historical situation is one mediated by images”

Question 15

What is a quote from Jameson to describe historicism?

Answer 15

“The random cannibalization of all the styles of the past, the play of random stylistic allusion”

In other words, the accumulation of different historical styles in order to symbolise and signify the past

Question 16

What is Jameson’s key point on historicism?

Answer 16

That the postmodern individual doesn’t have a longing for an authentic past, and that the idea of historical style takes precedence over history itself.

Question 17

What is evidence of the demand for the past?

Answer 17

Viewing figures for documentaries, re-enactments and lists of nostalgic events

The sales figures for antiques and memorabilia

Number of visitors to heritage sites and historical attractions

The proliferation of retro communities on the internet

Question 18

What is a quote from Lowenthal that describes how we feel about the past?

Answer 18

“We feel quite sure that the past really happened… the airy and insubstantial future may never arrive… time as we know it might end. By contrast, the past is tangible and secure; people think of it as fixed, unalterable, indelibly recorded” - 1985

Question 19

What are some theories as to the public’s obsession with the past?

Answer 19

1) It could be a coping strategy for surviving a dislocated, fragmented and very fast paced consumer society - “In a period of rapid change, there seems to be a demand for fixed certainties” Sarup, 1996)
2) It could be viewed as a way of enhancing the present as a form of re-enactment

Question 20

How is nostalgia defined?

Answer 20

It is defined as a longing for something that is absent, whether whatever is perceived to be absent is real or imaged.

Question 21

What is the nostalgic state?

Answer 21

Not necessarily fixed on finding a past, but rather with yearning for it and (according to Lowenthal) celebrating it’s values

Question 22

What is the nostalgia industry?

Answer 22

Presenting the past as commodity, providing consumers with a tangible manifestation of the past.

Question 23

What is the issue with vintage consumerism?

Answer 23

It is a form of themed consumption that creates needs to which there is no guaranteed satisfaction. It only guarantees consumers options that result in more consumerism.

Question 24

What do historical signs attempt to do?

Answer 24

Invoke nostalgic (romantic or idealised) feelings of the past.

Question 25

What are sites of prosumption?

Answer 25

Sites where users can both consume and produce its content

Question 26

What is changing the way we store information and relate to the past?

Answer 26

The internet (Recuber)

Question 27

What do online memory banks dedicated to disasters provide users with?

Answer 27

1) A source for self-help
2) A place for spontaneous commemoration and therapeutic monuments (memorials were traditionally erected by the elite, the internet is democratising this process)

Question 28

How popular is the September 11th online archive?

Answer 28

Very - it holds more than 150,000 digital items, with 40,000 firsthand stories alone

Question 29

What are two significant elements of nostalgia and memory?

Answer 29

1) Relating to periods in time that we remember - the act of remembering in this case is highly personalised, and focuses on the individual experience rather than the collective. Online sites offer therapeutic catharsis to those who contribute messages to memory banks (Recuber, 2010)
2) Relates to periods in times that we do not and can not remember first-hand - memory is manufactured in this instance, with a collective idealised view of the past occurring. The collective memory is formed through the memory institution that is the media and education system

Question 30

What are retrophilic communities?

Answer 30

A number of sites which focus on different “golden ages” of the past. Provide a safe haven for like-minded people to connect and discuss their very specific views of the past

Question 31

Why does Gray feel as though online retro-communities are utopian?

Answer 31

Because the solidity offered by the past is safe, it has already happened and there is now no room for uncertainty or change

Question 32

What is Retrospective Magazine?

Answer 32

It is a site that uses signifiers to refer to the perceived utopian values of the past. The users view it in idealistic terms and see it as risk free, seen as there was no terrorism or crime (although, neglecting to mention the oppression of and crimes against women, races other than white and the LGBT community)

Question 33

What is historical simulation?

Answer 33

The consuming of histroical images and sounds

Question 34

What is different about online retro communities?

Answer 34

They’re not just online stores where nostalgia can be consumed, but rather a marketplace where dreams can be perpetuated and exchanged

Question 35

What are some characteristics of retro communities?

Answer 35

1) It is scripted and managed - people have an avatar and a vintage presence
2) There is common behaviour that users are expected to follow
3) Common themes include attitudes to values, or perceptions of how society should be structured through the construction of completely virtual towns
4) Creates a sense of us/them, where modern society is constantly shed in a negative light
5) Users often have very specific cut-off points relating to which year they stop idealising about the past (1963 is a favourite)

Question 36

What is a quote from Lowenthal on escape?

Answer 36

“Besides enhancing an acceptable present, the past offers alternatives to an unacceptable present.”

Question 37

What does the retrospective view offer?

Answer 37

1) Escape
2) Authenticity
3) Identity
4) Response/motivation

Question 38

What are the characteristics of the retrospective view of escape?

Answer 38

That is fulfills and anaesthetic function that protects us from the pain of the present. That it decelerates the pace of modern existence with indulging in what is percieved to be a simpler existence, and provides structure in a social environment that is becoming increasingly devoid of any sort of stability.

Question 39

What are the characteristics of the retrospective view of authenticity?

Answer 39

Relates to the urgency to find the genuine, even if the genuine is a mere reproduction. It may be a paradox, but in postmodern terms, the authentic and inauthentic are irrelevant.

Antique collection is also important to this theme, as artefacts that belong to the past help us in some way distance ourselves from the present and connect us directly to the past.

Question 40

What are the characteristics of the retrospective view of identity?

Answer 40

1) Does vintage fasion allow the ‘real’ identity to be externalised, or indulge the desire to be different?
2) Do people project a higher moral filter onto the past than actually existed?
3) Retrophiles rely heavily on the past in order to externalise a part of their identity
4) Jameson believes that individualism and personal identity is a thing of the past in this postmodern world, hence the retrophilic attempt to claim this identity back through their connection with the past

Question 41

What are the characteristics of the retrospective view of response and motivation?

Answer 41

There is too much consumer choice, the past is deemed to be less complicated, and overwhelmed consumers attempt to reconnect to it.
There is also the dialectical opposition created by the retrophile rejection of advanced consumerism, yet consuming products of the nostalgia industry in an attempt to travel back in time

Question 42

What is an example of the past as a simulation?

Answer 42

The House in the Spitalfields - work of artist Dennis Severs, who sought to restore a house in a way that would allow him to step back into the past. It is a post-materialist reconstruction of 18th century life. Uses various realism devices such as smells, noises and warm candle-lit rooms to recreate the experience of the past

Question 43

What is the House in the Spitalfields seen as?

Answer 43

An example of history as a spectacle, where a series of historical images, objects and signs refer to each-other, thereby creating their own reality. This results in the hyperreality of the 18th century.

Question 44

In what ways can the past be problematic?

Answer 44

1) By considering it to be a commodity - it exists via the nostalgia industry
2) By considering it to be an antidote to the elements of dissatisfaction in the present (created by perceived inauthenticity and too much choice)
3) By considering it to be a spectacle - the relentless consumption of images and signs that all relate to one another through empty signification