Sin Blaché

“You said nostalgia can be a response to a sense of dislocation. And your book says it’s an act of creation, right? It brings lost things to life, things from your past, things you remember. And the act of nostalgia forges a link between you now and a past self that’s always partly imagined. It’s comforting. Gives you a sense of continuity. Makes you feel you’re the same person through time.”
― Sin Blaché, Prophet

“One model of nostalgia sees it as a psychological response to trauma and discontinuity. A defence mechanism. Big social changes can conjure it. Wars, revolutions, 9/11. People feel dislocated, so they conjure an imaginary past they long to return to. This fantasy place of safety. So nostalgia is emotional and psychological, but it’s also political. Highly manipulatable, either politically or in the marketplace. And that’s what my book’s about. Specifically, on how material history and nostalgia and politics coincide.” She waves her hands around the room. “All this stuff, you know?”
― Sin Blaché, Prophet