Nostalgia

A History of a Dangerous Emotion

De: Agnes Arnold-Forster

Narrado por: Agnes Arnold-Forster

Read by the author, Agnes Arnold-Forster.

‘Arnold-Forster belongs to that valuable non-jargon-spouting breed of academic who is capable of explaining complex ideas in simple language.’ – The Times

In Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion, Agnes Arnold-Forster blends neuroscience and psychology with the history of medicine and emotions to explore the evolution of nostalgia from its first identification in seventeenth-century Switzerland (when it was held to be an illness that could, quite literally, kill you) to the present day (when it is co-opted by advertising agencies and politicians alike to sell us goods and policies).

Nostalgia is a social and political emotion, vulnerable to misuse, and one that reflects the anxieties of the age. It is one of the many ways we communicate a desire for the past, dissatisfaction with the present and our visions for the future. Arnold-Forster’s fascinating history of this complex, slippery emotion is a lens through which to consider the changing pace of society, our collective feelings of regret, dislocation and belonging, the conditions of modern and contemporary work, and the politics of fear and anxiety. It is also a clear-eyed analysis of what we are doing now, how we feel about it and what we might want to change about the world we live in.

Reseñas de la Crítica

This absorbing exploration of nostalgia raises questions about its slippery nature, and shows how it has been chillingly deployed in politics, from the cold war to Trumpism

Arnold-Forster is a shrewd critic and delightful guide. Her prose is fluent but not flashy...She carries weighty learning lightly – embracing everything relevant, from dubious neuroscience to cod sociology.'

Beautifully compact, wide-ranging and enjoyable

Illuminating

Memory is fallible, unreliable even

Great info - highlighted quite a bit of the ebook. Highly recommend the audiobook (I own both) Best chapters are 4: The Psychology of Nostalgia, 5: The Nostalgia Wave, 6:How to Turn an Emotion into Revenue, 9: The Nostalgia Brain

I am definitely in the camp of nostalgia for the purpose of learning history, by attending reenactments (Renaissance faires, etc...) and like the author states:
Rather than emotionally identifying with their chosen period of time, these people justify their hobby along intellectual and rational lines – arguing that what they’re doing is a kind of scholarship. Rather than simply reading history books or primary sources, this is a way of understanding the past – warts and all – through doing

I need to work on my side eye roll of people who are nostalgic ALL the F@CKING time...they are probably old and lonely, at least the ones I know. I'm old, but I'll be damn if I'll be overly nostalgic. Could change as I get older but I'll be fighting it and reading this book again, hopefully.

That said, I think the author was well balanced in her reporting and data. And it did change my view on what I think about nostalgia.

- deliberately or unconsciously manipulate our own pasts, consolidate memories of very different times and places, and reconstruct that information to align more closely with our current values, ethics or sense of self. Nostalgia is part of that reconstruction. It takes things that happened and suffuses them with feeling, glosses them in gold and bathes them in rose-tinted light.
- ‘Nostalgia, is, of course, a hankering after a Golden Age of innocence and joy which never existed.
- One of the major findings of this era of nostalgia science was that smells were more powerful even than old photographs when it came to triggering memories.