The HBS hosts take a look at the political, philosophical, cultural, and personal dimensions of nostalgia.

This week, Leigh, Ammon and Shannon reminisce about the good old days. What is nostalgia? Why does the pull of a past-that-never-was exert such a strong influence on the human psyche? The American political climate has been largely dominated by feelings of nostalgia. The right has been nostalgic for America’s mythological past and the left has played heavily on the feelings of the mythology of the Obama years. The crew discusses dangerous nostalgia for problematic childhood books and evoke the philosophy of nostalgia in Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus and Derrida’s hauntology. And they wouldn’t be wistful Gen Xers if they didn’t muse over the lost art of making 80s mix tapes and the influence of capitalism in exploiting nostalgia to sell us the goods that were so much better when they first came out then they are now.

For further reading, check out the links below:

• For our friends, David and Ellie’s take on nostalgia, check out Episode 5 of the Overthink podcast, “How Nostalgia Shapes Identity.”
• Patrick Sauer writes about the ubiquity of the Muppets in culture for Smithosian magazine.
• What do psychologists think nostalgia is? Read Neel Burton’s, The Meaning of Nostalgia.
• More on Trump , and nostalgia.
• Biden also plays on the allure of nostalgia in more and less problematic ways.
• Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus argues that the mind’s desire for unity and coherence is ultimately a nostalgic move. Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx introduces  the idea of hauntology as a way to continue his contemplations on margins, ghosts, and fissures in meaning and language.
• For a fun video on Derrida’s Hauntology and 80’s Nostalgia, check out Jonas Čeika’s YouTube video.
• The decision to pull racist Dr. Seuss publications has drawn a great deal of discussion.
• “Mark Fisher’s ‘K-Punk’ and the Futures That Have Never Arrived,” by Hua Hsu, explores the ways in which nostalgia for the 80s and 90s has truncated new aesthetics from emerging.
• DJ Drama gives an oral history of the evolution of mixtapes.
• Ammon explores the temporality of the future in Heidegger and Derrida in Unresolved Futurities: On Hermeneutical Shapes.
• Mono no aware, “the pathos of things,” or “a sensitivity to ephemera,” is a Japanese term for the awareness of impermanence (無常, mujō), or transience of things. This beauty in ephemera is prominent in Murasaki Shikibu’s, The Tale of Genji.