CONCEPT
Restorative Nostalgia
Svetlana Boym’s term for the form of longing that proposes to reverse the displacement—to rebuild the golden age, restore the original condition, and undo the loss—and which is structurally dishonest because the past it constructs never existed in the form it is remembered, producing a politics aimed at a destination that does not exist.
Restorative nostalgia is the more dangerous of Svetlana Boym’s two nostalgias because it masquerades as a plan. Introduced in The Future of Nostalgia (2001) in explicit contrast to reflective nostalgia, restorative nostalgia does not merely mourn the lost home—it proposes to rebuild it. It is the nostalgia of national myth-making, heritage theme parks, and politicians who promise to make the nation great again by returning to a greatness that existed, if it existed at all, in a form far more complicated and far less comfortable than the myth acknowledges. In every case the restorative nostalgic performs the same operation: the past is simplified, idealized, and presented as a destination. The arrow of time is to be reversed. The displacement is to be undone. Boym’s insight was that restorative nostalgia is not merely misguided but structurally dishonest: it falsifies the past it constructs,
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