Phenomenology of Nostalgia

Saulius Geniusas (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Abstract: In an important article, Fred Davis writes: “Despite the word’s changing connotations since the seventeenth century, there remains one indisputable, albeit banal, feature of nostalgia upon which all agree, from those who have reflected only casually on the phenomenon to those who have studied it closely. This is that the material of nostalgic experience is the past.” The available phenomenological studies of nostalgia are also committed to this view. In my talk, I wish to bring this assumption into question. I will argue that nostalgia can be spoken of in three fundamental ways, as nostalgia for the past, nostalgia for the present, and nostalgia for the future.