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commodification

Nostalgia Traps: Politics, Commodities and their Seductions

Modernity, Politics and History A central reference point in the literature of nostalgia comes from the work of Svetlana Boym, who was a Harvard professor and literary critic. In her 2001 book, The Future of Nostalgia, Boym was less interested in nostalgia as an individual sickness than with its broader features as a “symptom of our age.”[1]  She makes a few central arguments about the connection between nostalgia and the modern human condition worth unpacking. Her inquiry is particularly rich for how it unveils, with beauty and precision, the complexities and ambiguities of collective nostalgia. First and foremost, despite what Read more