UNIVERSITY OF NOVA GORICA GRADUATE SCHOOL ...

Very generally speaking, nostalgia can often be seen as a pre-modern phenomenon in that it
clearly defies factuality and historicity as outlined during the period of the Enlightenment and later
on throughout the age of ratio. In the same vein, the archive, an invention that dates to that same
period (at least in terms of proportion and arduousness) can, arguably, be seen as the resource of
ultimate fact and a pillar of science. 430 However, it may just be that the both are much more
connected: nostalgia could only ‗erupt‘ once the archival ‗sanitation units‘ took over the definition
of the past-preserving/archiving criteria; and hence remembering criteria as well. In this view
nostalgia, at its very essence, can be seen as a reaction against formalisation, institutionalisation of
the past. 431 And not only that, archive and nostalgia share the ‗obsession‘ of collecting, compiling,
sorting and curating.
To take this somewhat further, memory—and nostalgia as its ultimate distortion—can be seen as a
reaction formation against technological, political or cultural developments, i.e. as an attempt to
―slow down information processing, to resist the dissolution of time in the synchronicity of the
archive, to recover a mode of contemplation outside the universe of simulation and fast-speed
information [...], to claim some anchoring in a world of [..] heterogeneity, non-synchronicity and
information overload.‖ 432 These processes can be readily observed in western and post-socialist
environments alike. Yet, as appealing as this concept may be, the developments in DME (and as
analysed above) suggest that it is not entirely adequate; and not because digital technology
facilitates the loss of anchoring. Yes, Huyssen accurately traces the memory boom in the reaction
formation, 433 which is not unimportantly related to the technologising of the world. Yet, in DME
the technology offers itself as the salvation of memory, although it is in many respects also the
doom of it. The processes of mediation of memories and the related co-creative practices
essentially prevent—as it is clear from several cases in the above analysed often chronologically
‗unnavigable‘ Facebook profiles—much contemplation or brooding characteristic for reminiscing
or nostalgic feelings. Transcending the on-the-fly-ness of digital experience requires a pacing
down of production and consumption.
Now, to reiterate, dismissal of (cyber-)nostalgia is not in order. Instead, what the cases analysed
above also suggest is a different take on (Yugo)nostalgia. I do not want to discard the concept
430 See Geoffrey C. Bowker, Memory practices in the Sciences, 1–34.
431 Here I have to emphasise that nostalgia is particularly deeply related to becoming of age, and that it is childhood
that is often most nostalgically remembered. This applies to personal as well as collective childhood, i.e. to the ‗day of
the making of a nation.‘ Having said that, growing up can also be seen as a process of institutionalisation and
consequent loss of innocence and freedom. This would make then tracing nostalgia in
formalisation/institutionalisation a more widely applicable one.
432 Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia, New York, Routledge, 1995, 7.
433 Ibid.
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