Visual Art Will We Feel Nostalgia for 2020? Elijah Teitelbaum | Issue 108 -- refuge. History appears far more stable than it ever actually was; even the recent past has aged rapidly under layers of rose-tinted patina. Indeed, nostalgia is all around us these days. Old films are constantly being rebooted, the eighties are in style, and home-baking traditions have been rediscovered in lockdown. While seeking comfort in the familiar might seem simplistic, the ways we generate and consume nostalgia make it complex: how we perceive and connect to the past makes it an important medium for the cultural and political narratives which shape our communities. Art and popular media -- What were once ordinary ways communities came together—worship, bars, celebrations, guests—have accrued overtones of danger. We have had to rethink how to connect with one another, and nostalgia plays an important role here: when we are able to see that others share our affinity for the past, and that we locate common values there, we gain a language for our contemporary communities. Though we often think of our nostalgia as being for an irrevocable past, it is actually about our present imagination and concerns. Our communal attraction to nostalgia, our ways of fitting the past into the present, represent historical memory in flexible, complex, and often troubled ways. Sometimes we see this, and sometimes we don’t. Nostalgia’s simplification of the past is often overt and obvious, but our desires for the feel of a synagogue sanctuary or a Sunday brunch can be covertly nostalgic in ways we might not realize. Nonetheless, the relationship between history and memory remains constant: our nostalgia places our values first, then imagines histories which embody those values, independent of actual experience. -- reality—by the fact that this person was here, or this action took place—but are connected through our own perception of the past. Nostalgia too, as culturally mediated memory, is defined by how we approach it, rather than what it refers to. This makes it a particularly useful way for communities to tell stories about their -- If the past is so flexible, perhaps we should think about how our current moment will age. Will we feel nostalgia for 2020? The question seems absurd. Why would anyone feel nostalgia for a moment synonymous with division, danger, and unrest? As the turn of the year approached and the pandemic wore on, the arrival of 2021 was imbued with -- It is important to ask this question because, as Attie attests, the links between history and memory, memory and nostalgia, are not as intuitive as they appear. On closer inspection, many nostalgic periods reveal their roots in moments of similar distress. The 1950s’ quaint -- feel differently about 2020 further down the road. While nostalgia often paints over history in broad strokes, it is not about burying the past. It is not as though hardship and pain simply vanish. Rather, suffering is placed in other frames of reference which de-emphasize it—or grant it a redeeming significance. These reactions capitalize on the fact that memory speaks to the present: our nostalgia is something which takes place in this moment. How people approach history is informed first and foremost by what they care about in the -- Bronzeville. As the neighborhood grew, pressure increased to prevent further racial integration with other areas of Chicago. Michelle Boyd drives this home in her book Jim Crow Nostalgia: Reconstructing Race in Bronzeville, where she describes how, beginning in the early twentieth century, “Whites responded to Blacks’ visibility and quest for economic -- authenticity perceived in Bronzeville’s Black culture is due to the forced concentration of Black Americans within this bounded space. Contemporary nostalgia tends to glide over this, highlighting the cultural value of these communities instead. In the neighborhood today, murals emphasize the strength of a cohesive Black community without dwelling much on why it was a minority enclave in the first place. What does this say about nostalgia’s relation to the past? Are Bronzeville’s warm memories at risk if their historical picture becomes fully exposed? Not quite. Nostalgia, after all, is a contemporary way of approaching the past that puts a present community’s values first. The disjunction between nostalgia and history reveals not so much a deficiency of memory as a priority for what matters here and now. Looking to Bronzeville of the 1940s as a vibrant and cohesive Black -- These connections locate what is really important for nostalgic individuals and groups. Their nostalgia is about defining, envisioning, and supporting a perspective on history—on values, culture, and experiences—which connects with their contemporary concerns. This way of identifying what is valuable in certain nostalgic moments demonstrates how nostalgia is itself an inflected connection to the past. Even when that past includes seemingly insurmountable obstacles to this attachment, such as racial segregation, what is most important -- over its challenging aspects, as with segregation or persecution. In some cases, that pain can be recontextualized as a meaningful feature of the nostalgia itself. This is how many Jews have valorized their eastern European, “old world” predecessors. Those Jews and their communities were shaped by anti-Semitic restrictions which opposed -- exclusion has been recast as a narrative about communal vibrancy. Unlike nostalgia for Bronzeville, Jewish nostalgia for the old world embraces its very pain and trauma. While nostalgia for Bronzeville has recast the fact of segregation within an aspirational narrative, the way that these Jewish communities are depicted often stresses their -- Now, Lilien himself had his own aims for his artwork, and was not especially interested in casting eastern Europe as a site of nostalgia, but the messages he advanced became important for later nostalgic perspectives. In this image, religious overtones dominate, not only in -- writes, eastern European Jews’ struggle is nostalgically depicted “as the handmaiden of deep spirituality, intellectualism, and generosity.” And so, while nostalgia does not repress this struggle, it wholly recasts it from its immediate distress. -- This kind of thinking about the past underscores that pain does not preclude nostalgia. We can feel warmly about moments that are hurtful and dangerous. We can feel affinity for times that we would not actually want to live in. What is most important to recognize in these -- contextualized and what they imply: whether they recall ongoing struggles, as with Bronzeville, or emphasize what people value within their nostalgia, as with Kishinev. Sarah Weal. Ruth, Scarlett, and David, 2020. From the series Furloughed -- __________________________________________________________________ The pandemic has created a moment for which nostalgia at first seems incomprehensible. The daily death toll, the fear of infection, and the isolation that characterize this moment have left us with an -- pandemic, and so its bitterness defines how we feel about it. However, as we can see from other examples, these things change as they age. Nostalgia teases certain narratives out of history, and nostalgia is beholden to the present over and above the past. This may mean that our lockdown’s isolation will be underplayed, like segregation in memories -- feelings about lockdown—proximity, after all, is not a positive thing in and of itself—but rather that we may come to ascribe an important value to these experiences. It is because nostalgia trades in the communal and the narrative that this is possible. The question is not so much, “Will we feel nostalgia for 2020?” as, “What will shape the nostalgia of the future?” What new factors will inform the way we feel about turning to the past? Some may dislike this nostalgic habit, sensing an arbitrariness to the stories it tells. But does nostalgia’s reshaping of the past really represent a disconnect with history? Not necessarily. Nostalgia does not show that “real” history is different because it is neutral; rather, it illustrates that no past is neutral, that nostalgia and history alike must be taken seriously. We must embrace the fact that our memory is informed by what we care about in the present. As we -- Elijah Teitelbaum is a researcher at the University of Cambridge. His work focuses on connections between nostalgia and visual culture, and especially how American Jewish communities perceive and represent their histories. -- Tags: 2020 art history COVID-19 Elijah Teitelbaum history lockdown pandemic past Will We Feel Nostalgia for 2020 Related Visual Art