The Problems with Using Nostalgia to Represent the Past Essay

The Problems with victimization Nostalgia to Represent the Past - Essay ExampleThe word nostalgia originates from the terms nostos, which agent to return, and algos, which means torture (Trigg 2006, 53). Therefore, nostalgia has mostly been a representation of the pain a person feels when s/he is not with his/her love ones or away from his/her dear homeland. This essay discusses the potential problems with using nostalgia to represent the past.What is Nostalgia?The term nostalgia plainly means homesickness or home- thirstiness. In the book The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boyn develops the two expressions of nostalgic panorama, a reflective nostalgia, which dwells in long and loss and a restorative nostalgia, which refers to nostos and suggests to rebuild the lost home (Scott 2010, 45). It was Johannes Hofer who first used the word nostalgia in 1688. Hofer enumerated several indications of nostalgia, namely, weakened senses, weakness, quickened heartbeat, insomnia, anxiety, sadn ess, etc. For Hofer, nostalgia is a physical illness caused by brain disorders (Naqvi 2007, 10). Between the eighteenth and 19th century nostalgia was assumed to be, to a certain extent, a psychosomatically illness brought about by inbred struggles. Psychoanalytic accounts linking nostalgia to a childhood trauma and the desire to go back to the mothers womb were widespread throughout the 20th century (Naqvi 2007, 10-11). . On the other hand, counter to the dis savvys on the roots of nostalgia at that place was strong agreement until the mid-20th century to categorise nostalgia as an illness. During this period nostalgia was specifically linked to depression. However, in the seventies the meaning and image of nostalgia fully transformed. It was at this time that nostalgia shifted from a relish for home to a longing for time, specifically for the past. As a result, nostalgia started to be differentiated from home-longing (Koneke 2011, 5). In addition, although nostalgia was previo usly interpreted from the point of guess of the individual in the 1970s nostalgia turned out to be a sociological occurrence as well. Social scientists linked nostalgia to a perspective of demise in humanity, particularly a demise in morality and unity, and with a longing for peace, genuineness, and nature. This newly formed social viewpoint resulted further in the phylogenesis of a new viewpoint on nostalgia, namely, a collective nostalgia (Koneke 2011, 5). Understanding the nature of nostalgia has actually been genuinely difficult. Even though nostalgia was originally regarded to be a depressing or melancholic illness whilst it is presently rather regarded to be pleasurable, most professionals who have been looking at nostalgia have recognised that nostalgia involves favourable and inauspicious sentiments at the same time. In fact, nostalgia is largely regarded as a bittersweet feeling, a bipolar sentiment which merges pleasure with anguish, affection with pain, and happiness with sadness (Sprengler 2011, 14). Nostalgias bittersweet essence is largely either payable to experiencing at the same time past pleasure and existing anguish, or to the problem of simultaneously longing to break away from the need to accept the present and into the past. Even though there is widespread agreement that nostalgia is a bittersweet emotion there is a certain debate, whether the happy or the melancholic aspects dominate. A number of scholars, particularly psychoanalysts, have deduced from case narratives that the central features of nostalgia are disillusionment, anxiety, and grief (Koneke 2011, 5-6). To sum up the