La nostalgie

La notion de nostalgie m'intrigue. Je suis malheureusement une de ses victimes. Il suffit que le moment soit passé pour que je le regrette.

Isaiah Berlin traite de la nostalgie dans son livre "The Roots of Romanticism" (je ne crois pas qu'il existe une traduction). It présente d'abord la notion de profondeur, comme lorsque l'on dit d'une oeuvre ou d'un auteur qu'il est "profond". D'après lui, cette notion est aussi née avec le Romantisme, cette idée qu'il y a toujours plus sous les apparences.

A partir de là il explique que, puisque nous ne pouvons pas atteindre la totalité, puisque l'infinité est hors d'atteinte, il ne nous reste qu'à nous retourner et à regretter le passé. Les penseurs des Lumières croyaient fermement en un futur meilleur, il suffisait de trouver la bonne voie pour l'atteindre: les bonnes lois, les bonnes règles, les bons préceptes. Par contre les Romantiques aspirent à la perfection. J'ai beaucoup d'admiration pour la pensée de Berlin mais je ne suis pas tout à fait convaincue par son explication. J'y vois un exemple d'un penseur qui essaie de pousser un objet triangulaire dans un trou rond et qui affirme que la pièce s'imbrique parfaitement. La nostalgie est-elle vraiment seulement dûe à un manque de confiance en l'avenir?  Même si elle est exacerbée chez les Romantiques, la nostalgie existe dans d'autres cultures, en extrême orient par exemple. J'ai longtemps cru que la nostalgie présente dans la culture Afro-Américaine était dûe à leur diaspora. Mais leurs pays d'origine en Afrique semblent avoir une profonde connexion avec la nostalgie Ecoutez Ismaël Lo ci-dessous, par exemple.

Ismail Lo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogWBf5j9vVE&feature=related

Salif Keita:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFTw0c9ew3k

Billie Holliday et Louis Armstrong:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbmSmg1IhZE&feature=related

Contributed by  - -  Arabella Hutter

Of nostalgia

The notion of nostalgia intrigues me. I am one of its victims. Suffices that the moment be past for me to remember it with nostalgia. 

Isaiah Berlin discusses it in his book "The Roots of Romanticism". He looks first at the notion of depth, as in a piece of art or a thinker which we might call "deep". According to him it's also something that was born with Romanticism, this idea that there is always more than meets the eye, than meets the brain. 

From there he explains that because we can never reach totality, because infinity is out of our reach we can only turn around and pine for the past. While thinkers from the Enlightenment believed firmly that the future could be perfectly satisfactory  if we found the right way - the right laws, the right rules -  to reach it, the Romantics aspire to heights, to impossible perfection. I have a lot of admiration for Berlin's thinking but I am not convinced by his explanation of nostalgia. it seems to me a case of a thinker pushing a triangular object into a circular hole within his system and explaining how perfectly well it fits. Isn't there more to nostalgia than a lack of faith in the future? And nostalgia is common to other cultures besides Romanticism. I had always thought that the nostalgia expressed in African American culture had been passed down by ancestors deprived of their homeland. But I wonder if it's does not find its origin in Africa's own very strong brand of nostalgia in many of its cultures, hear Ismael Lo (below). 

My curiosity has been pricked, i'm going to keep on investigating. Any comments or suggestions welcome.

Ismail Lo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogWBf5j9vVE&feature=related

Salif Keita:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFTw0c9ew3k

Contributed by  - -  Arabella Hutter

That drive

A dangerous demon lurking from dark recesses...

Still reading (for the second time) Isaiah Berlin's "The Roots of Romanticism", a book which seems to me crucial in understanding our times. Berlin argues that the Western world is still in a period of romanticism in its focus on the individual. And this romanticism is spreading through the world as culture abandon their group-oriented focus to turn to one's self. 

I wonder whether Glissant ever speaks about romanticism in his writings, would be curious to know what his take on it is. Of "The Roots of Romanticism" more later, but in the meantime here's an interesting excerpt:

This is the beginning of the vast drive forward on the part of inspired individuals, or inspired nations, constantly creating themselves afresh, constantly aspiring to purify themselves, and to reach some unheard-or height of endless self-transformation, endless self-creation, works of art, constantly engaged in creating themselves, forward, forward, like a kind of vast cosmic desing perpetually renewing itself. This half-metaphysical, half-religious notion, which emerges from the sober pages of Kant, and which Kant repudiated with the greatest possible vehemence and indignation, was destined to have an extremely violent effect upon both German politics and German morals, but also upon German art, German prose and German verse, and then by natural transference upon the French, and upon the English as well.

Contributed by - - Arabella Hutter