The Future Of NostalgiaCan one be nostalgic for the home one never had? Why is it that the age of globalization is accompanied by a no less global epidemic of nostalgia? Can we know what we are nostalgic for? In the seventeenth century, Swiss doctors believed that opium, leeches, and a trek through the Alps would cure nostalgia. In 1733 a Russian commander, disgusted with the debilitating homesickness rampant among his troops, buried a soldier alive as a deterrent to nostalgia. In her new book, Svetlana Boym develops a comprehensive approach to this elusive ailment. Combining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities-St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague-and the imagined homelands of exiles-Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstam, and Brodsky. From Jurassic Park to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, from love letters on Kafka's grave to conversations with Hitler's impersonator, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes. |
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The future of nostalgia
User Review - Not Available - Book VerdictThe current U.S. craze for nostalgia runs from automobiles (the PT Cruiser) to fashion (the return of bell-bottoms) to television (TV Land reruns). Despite modern technology and conveniences, we enjoy ... Read full review
Review: The Future of Nostalgia
User Review - Levon - GoodreadsA little verbose, but also really touching. A rare combination. Rigorously routed in the examination of monumentality, it also offers insight into the political climes and memories of the soviet bloc ... Read full review
Contents
Return to Origins | 41 |
PART 2 | 73 |
Moscow the Russian Rome | 83 |
Copyright | |
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Bibliographic information
| Title | The Future Of Nostalgia |
| Author | Svetlana Boym |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Basic Books, 2001 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | Jan 11, 2010 |
| ISBN | 0465007074, 9780465007073 |
| Length | 432 pages |
| Subjects | › Social Science / Popular Culture |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |