Narrative Possibilities of the Past for the Future: Nostalgia and Hope

摘要

This article explores the ways in which narratives of the past may provide resources for articulating future possibilities. In societies with a history of sociopolitical conflict, such as South Africa, the past is typically construed as territory to be left behind, negated, and dissolved in the solutions of hard-won democratic discourses, which galvanize us to construct social and personal futures that bear no resemblance to this past. Narratives of the past serve as morality tales of warning or celebratory accounts of overcoming, and nostalgic recollection is by definition rendered regressive, implying a rejection of the current political landscape by those who have experienced a loss of illegitimate power. However, this article argues that this conceptualization of nostalgia as inevitably reactionary may blind us to possibilities for employing the resources of the past in a different way. Perhaps nostalgia is not so much a longing for the way things were, as a longing for futures that never came or horizons of possibilities that have been foreclosed by the unfolding of events. Perhaps nostalgia is the desire not to be who we once were, but to be, once again, our potential future selves. The article asks whether nostalgic narratives of the past may provide resources for the present and the construction of a society characterized by peace and social justice, for our imaginative reach toward new possible horizons and hopeful futures.