Nostalgia as a meta-historical problem: an interpretation

Abstract

Historians are generally little interested in the phenomenon of nostalgia. Sometimes the term "nostalgic" is employed to mark "conservatives," in a complex movement in which such concepts are employed interchangeably. The following texts, translated by us, seek to invite Brazilian historians to pay due attention to possibilities - not only theoretical, but political - suggested by the reading of Arnold Gehlen's essays, "Happiness evaded. An interpretation of nostalgia (1976) - and Svetlana Boym - Nostalgia and its dislikes (2007).