Looking Back for a Better Future: Coping with the Pandemic
By Aanchal Vij
At a time when peering ahead into the future seems overwhelming, looking back and indulging in activities that used to offer comfort in the past have been a source of some respite. There are people who are converting their homes into ‘portals to the past’ and embracing lifestyles based on past eras – and these collective and personal desire(s) are symptomatic of what we believe our relationship with our histories to be. This pandemic has tapped into some of our own and our communities’ anxieties triggering a look-back at cultural artefacts that used to offer comfort at an easier time in our lives. Whether it is music, films, or activities, some of us yearn for an immersion into a time that replicates a sense of connectedness and security we felt at the time.
My own research focuses on this desire to look back at our personal or historical past for comfort and exploring the authenticity of such past(s). Do we, perhaps, manufacture histories and realities to long for that didn’t quite exist? More importantly, what are the consequences of such longing when it spills beyond the individual and becomes communal or even historical?
The pandemic has made some of these discrepancies between a past that was and one we believe to be real.
Mike Clarke, a researcher at University of Roehampton who used to sing in choirs when he was younger, says that he hasn’t felt the urge to listen to his recordings of past performances in the past 7 years until last year when he suddenly missed it – the communal aspect of it, the connectedness and solidarity around the performance – and has been listening to them frequently. It makes him feel nostalgic and reminds him of a time when crowds were possible, offering him a sense of comfort. He wonders if he truly misses performing and the act of singing itself, or if the lockdown and a surging sense of isolation has exaggerated this longing for choral singing.
I myself have been spending an enormous amount of time painting during this lockdown, which has been impressively helpful for my mental health. It, unsurprisingly, makes me feel nostalgic for some kind of simpler time when painting signified calm and ease. What is ironic, and underscores the romanticisation of nostalgia I write about, is that as a young girl I never enjoyed painting. In fact, I found it stressful and a bit tedious. But 11 years and a pandemic later, I am enjoying holding the paint brush and letting the false sense of nostalgia comfort me.
Romanticising the past is central to the sense of nostalgia. Clarke’s uncertainty about whether he truly misses performing and my own love of painting that seems intrinsic to my childhood are key to understanding why such nostalgia – which can be a great sense of comfort to individuals – can have a slippery aspect when it becomes a political of national phenomenon. Whether it was Donald Trump’s campaign “Make America Great Again” or the 43% of the British population that believes that The Great Britain has been worse since Queen Elizabeth II’s accession, a sense of nostalgia has become deeply imbued in our political and capitalistic structures. Nostalgia had become a commodity – something to purchase or sell, something to manufacture – even before the pandemic. But the pandemic has heightened the value of past comforts as we collectively experience the loss of both material and immaterial realities, and an increasing sense of vulnerability in relation to the future.
My research explores the various aspects of nostalgia – post-traumatic, imperial, personal, political, imagined – to reflect on communities and nations that tend to deliberately misremember or forget versions of their history to maintain myths about their heroism or innocence. During this time, as we find ourselves delving into activities that make us nostalgic, let us take a moment to think about the authenticity of such longing; we can allow ourselves this sense of comfort especially at this difficult time but it is worth thinking about the politics of such nostalgia when it transcends the individual and becomes collective.
About the author
Aanchal Vij is an American Studies researcher at University of Sussex. She works on nostalgia, American exceptionalism, and comic books. She can be reached at Aanchal.vij@sussex.ac.uk