While conducting a bit of research on nostalgia, we came to discover the works of Svetlana Boym, on a site that we had no idea existed until today: Monumento Transformation —an archive of what was once a book over 900 pages long, and was originally published in the Czech language. This online guidebook contains over 200 “entries”. Monumento Transformation’s goal is to create a tool for the intellectual grasping of the processes of social and political change in countries that call themselves "countries of transformation" or are described by this term.
We were very moved by this discovery, and excited to share this database with you, as well as the works of Svetlana Boym —a playwright, novelist, media artist, and was the Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literatures at Harvard University. Svetlana was also an associate of the Graduate School of Design and Architecture at Harvard University.
“Modern nostalgia is paradoxical in the sense that the universality of longing can make us more empathetic toward fellow humans, yet the moment we try to repair “longing” with a particular “belonging”—the apprehension of loss with a rediscovery of identity and especially of a national community and a unique and pure homeland—we often part ways and put an end to mutual understanding. Álgos (longing) is what we share, yet nóstos (the return home) is what divides us. It is the promise to rebuild the ideal home that lies at the core of many powerful ideologies of today, tempting us to relinquish critical thinking for emotional bonding. The danger of nostalgia is that it tends to confuse the actual home with an imaginary one. In extreme cases, it can create a phantom homeland, for the sake of which one is ready to die or kill. Unelected nostalgia breeds monsters. Yet the sentiment itself, the mourning of displacement and temporal irreversibility, is at the very core of the modern condition.”