nostalgia


NOSTALGIA
"Back in the day," "the good old days," and similar clichés signal negative and positive modes of longing.  Although this temporary suspension of what's happening around and to us at present seems to be a normal human habit, its abuse can lead to extremely consequential  results: intolerance, arrogance for which a person is willing to die, ego-worship, paralysis of sympathy.  In the midst of COVID-19 crises and expanding chaos, nostalgia ought to be held in check along with  charity, hope, and faith! In many instances, virtues are vices.

When we talk with friends at proper  social distance, the conversation may eventually bring up shared memories.  And quite too often, the remembering is rose-tinted.  For example, the two-hour conversation I had with my goddaughter about the death of her mother who was also one of my godchildren was spiked with bright moments, and I suspect we were jointly repressing the truth of what was less than good about the past.  Repression or mis-reading of what was bad nurtures  our   discussions of blatant  violence, slavery and its current guises ,and  systemic inequity.  More than sufficient evidence assaults us endlessly and gives American  fascism and bitchery the prospect of thriving.  Nostalgia is a powerful  ingredient in our predicting dystopian futures.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            7/12/2020 8:55:43 AM

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CLA paper

CLA,   April 6, 2018 Jerry W. Ward, Jr. PHBW:   Negotiating the Ideas of Seven Writers [1]                 Founded in 1983 by Dr. Maryemma Graham, "The Afro-American Novel Project" (AANP) had the initial goal of identifying all published novels written by African Americans from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth century.   AANP became The Project on the History of Black Writing (PHBW) in 1990 to reflect an enlarged vision and a more ambitious aim.   PHBW want to make a substantial contribution to what we then spoke of as our "Profession" by organizing bibliographic information and databases, sponsoring institutes and seminars, and by encouraging our colleagues to have rigorous engagements with all genres of black (African American) "writing" within   frames   of historical inquiry.                              The Project's   working frame was an   adaptation of the paradigm of unity in African American Studies , f
Read more

reading notes for September 23, 2019

Reading Notes for September 23, 2019 Eighteen years after the tragedy of 9/11 as I re-read Amiri Baraka's "Somebody Blew Up America" (2001), two meanderings occur: 1) a chance temptation to ask what the term "pro-Semitic" can mean in the contexts of (a) Israeli and world politics and (b) to what extent the amount of foreign aid the USA donates to Israel truly matters, and 2) a more focused temptation to ask if Morrison's Playing in the Dark sheds light on the motives that govern projects devoted to discussions of slavery beginning with 1619. I suspect those projects are at once very literary and very political. Such speculations arose during a September 12 conversation with one of my former UNCF/Mellon mentees whose research on redemption now teaches me, the former mentor, a few things about the urgency of scholarship in the twenty-first century.   The journey forth happens in the cognitive territory of "universal enslavement,"
Read more

Musings, February 8-9, 2021

    MUSINGS OF THE DAY   The mother- and father-ships of sanity have landed   Let our enemies of whatever color they be know this as we eradicate them with the tools of insanity.   Mr. Ramcat informed me this morning that I need to tie up loose ends and thank all the people who have made my life a rich and satisfying experience of 77+ years.   If you deserve my gratitude, you know who you are.   Four quotations to brighten the day------   "I don't regret my years as a prosecutor assigned to juvenile court.   In some ways, I think it is why I was put on this earth." ---Daphne R. Robinson   "While there are books and articles concentrating on young black men in the social sciences and education, thee has been comparatively little input from scholars in the arts and humanities/" Howard Rambsy II   "The hashtag 'black lives matter,' which now rings prophetically through various quarters of the United States of America and int
Read more