In contemporary social diagnoses, nostalgia has repeatedly been used as an explanation for a perceived backwardness and cultural division in Western societies. However, the critique of such reductionism has itself become historical. While Theodor Adorno and Helmuth Plessner suspicously observed nostalgia for the "Roaring Twenties" in the early 1960s, left-wing and right-wing cultural critics in the 1970s and 1980s expressed unease when confronted with a wave of nostalgia for the time of the "economic miracle" (Wirtschaftswunder), which was interpreted as a reaction to acceleration in everyday life and economic crises. In the 1990s, the supposedly "ostalgic" unwillingness of East Germans to integrate was widely lamented, and finally nostalgia emerged as an explanation for right-wing populist movements - from "Make America Great Again!” to “Finalize the ‘Wende’!”. In fact, fundamentally different conceptions of history emerge as the central basis of a diagnosed social division: what some celebrate as progress (such as the dissolution of traditional gender roles or social emancipation movements) heralds social decline for others. Apparently untouched by such political trench warfare, the market for retro fashion, yearbooks and decadebooks, or everyday memories of the material heritage of the 1950s to 1980s did not only flourish with the "Generation Golf" (Florian Illies). But even seemingly harmless nostalgic memories of past consumer and youth cultures as well as subcultures have been interpreted as signs of the lack of innovation in pop culture ( Simon Reynolds 2012, Retromania. Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past, London: Faber and Faber Ltd.) and an expression of a regressive zeitgeist in the sense of Zygmunt Bauman (Zygmunt Bauman 2017, Retrotopia, Cambridge, UK: Polity). However, consuming earlier products of pop culture since the beginning of the Corona pandemic has increasingly been considered a way of dealing with crisis.
In view of the – mostly negatively connotated – use of the nostalgia concept for very different phenomena, we seek to evaluate its analytical value for contemporary history research. The complexity of the phenomena and interpretations mentioned suggests that nostalgia may be found unexpectedly in very different fields of research. The postgraduate forum therefore would like to discuss the following questions, among others: What characterizes nostalgia and how can nostalgic phenomena possibly be found at different times and in different social groups? How was nostalgia assessed in the past? Which role did references and instrumentalizations of the past play in different historical contexts, be they political, cultural or social? What is the interdependency between nostalgia and the concepts in historical science of memory and historical culture? How should a specifically contemporary nostalgia concept be conceived? We do not intend to limit debates by applying a fixed definition of nostalgia. Instead, we want the Forum to be understood as a contribution to the debate and an invitation to generally discuss concepts of nostalgia for contemporary history.
Submissions may but do not necessarily have to concern the following topics, and also may appear only as secondary aspects of your research project.
- "Left" and "right" nostalgia and political founding myths (e.g. right-wing populism, emancipation narratives of social movements etc., military, secret services and security agencies as communities of memory)
- Nostalgic images of everyday life (e.g. decades as nostalgic retreats, village communities, pop culture nostalgia, sports clubs as communities of remembrance)
- Fictional/nostalgic worlds in media (e.g. documentaries on the everyday life in the GDR, movies and tv shows like Babylon Berlin or The Alienist, medieval folk rock )
- Subaltern/non-hegemonic memories and nostalgia (e.g. migrant memories, queer memories, gender and body images)
- New perspectives on professional public history narratives (e.g. narratives/debates in and about exhibitions, public history, politics of history).
Proposals for all sections should not exceed 500 words and can be submitted in German or English along with a short academic CV by e-mail (doktorandenforum@zzf-potsdam.de) by doctoral candidates or young researchers. The deadline for submissions is 30 April 2021.
The postgraduate forum will not follow the structure of classic conferences. Instead of having several subsequent talks in one section and a commentator summarizing afterwards,we ask the participants to position themselves in a short presentation on a thesis or question to be posed by the organizers in advance. This should enable a more vivid discussion. The respective theses will be developed during the composition of the individual panels on the basis of submitted contributions and sent to the contributors in advance. The speakers to be selected by 15 May 2021 are asked to submit discussion papers of no more than six pages. The Forum will focus on the discussion of the theses and challenges of the respective research projects. For this purpose we ask for a compact and problem-oriented presentation. Innovative presentation techniques are welcome