A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design. Select any style sheet from the list to load it into this page.
Nostalgia and Modernization
Nostalgia and modernization
are rather abstract ideas that defy simple categorization and analysis,
especially in establishing a relationship between the two concepts. I would posit, however, that while nostalgia
is often looking to the indeterminate past and modernization has its
eyes to the unrealized future, both constructs are in the service of
the current age in an effort to create a “better” present.
My
terms demand some clarification and explication since I intend
to use them in a somewhat unorthodox fashion. Generally
speaking, in our culture, nostalgia is thought of as a state
of mind, a personal condition akin to sentimentality, devoid
of overt political, social, or cultural overtones. This
has not always been the case and, in fact, is not the incarnation
of nostalgia that I will be examining. A
longing for the “true” home and attempts to recreate the
place and/or time that never existed—which arguably are still
strong urges in our thoroughly modern world—have nostalgia as
the driving force. Svetlana Boym traces the history and
ramifications of nostalgia, beginning with the creation of
the clinical term by a 17th Century Swiss doctor when the
condition was deemed a curable illness. She
continues to follow nostalgia into later eras when the illness
began to be viewed as an affliction to society. “Nostalgia was not merely
an individual anxiety but a public threat that revealed the
contradictions of modernity and acquired a greater political
importance.”
[1]
This definition or conception of nostalgia
contains aspects of menace along with considerably more power
than do the vague longing and wistful sighs of sentimentality. My intent is for this new image of a
bolstered nostalgia to stand opposite the monolithic idea of modernity.
Have
we “obtained” modernity? Modernity
is a state of being modern, and “modern” suggests having
characteristics of the present. Modernization
then is the strange process of bringing technology or a culture
up to date. What is the system to measure this sense of pertaining
to the present? There are some definite answers in the
realm of technology, but beyond inventions and discoveries,
the landscape becomes considerably less defined. If
there is a constant need to update, to become “more modern,” then
the process of modernization is never complete and modernity
is never reached. We can explode the concept of modernity
with intellectual concepts such as post-modernism, we can replace
the outmoded idea of modernism with “more modern” political/social
terms such as globalism, yet the fundamental specter of modernity
is still a powerful idea and the driving force behind a belief in progress, which arguably
is still reigns supreme in today’s world. Modernization—and
modernity to a certain extent—always pertains to the future
as much as to the present.
The Region's Geographical and Political Map
The
terms used to designate the geographical area between the
western border of Russia and the eastern borders of Germany/Austria
are inevitably tangled up in politics and culture, yet
they are of the utmost importance to any investigation
into the cultural landscape of the region. The generally accepted term is “Central
Europe” from the simple argument that this area is
more or less the geographical center of the continent that
extends to the Ural Mountains. The term is somewhat problematic
since it flirts dangerously with inadvertently referring
back to a concept of mitteleuropa,
which has historically been used by nationalist movements
intent on expansion and cultural or political domination.
[2]
While I hesitate to denigrate the use of the term “Eastern
Europe” for fear suggesting falsely that Hungary
and its neighbors have no cultural common ground with
the geographical East of the continent (Russia and the
Ukraine, for two), it is a deceptive term that tends
to refer back to the outdated political terms of “Eastern
Bloc” and “2nd World.” I
will instead use the regional term “Visegrad
Nations” in referring to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary,
and the Czech Republic in the second half of the 20th Century,
or the historic/political designation of “Warsaw
Pact Nations” when adding Romania and Bulgaria
to the group. These terms suggest a certain degree
of unity with respect to an ideological stance taken
against the former Soviet Union, or at least a division
between Moscow and the virtually occupied. At
the same time, any term used to group countries is somewhat
deceptive, suggesting a political alliance or cultural
affinity that may have been (or may be) tenuous at best.
The
only term left, while something of a mouthful, establishes
the correct sense of tone for my argument: Central-Eastern
Europe. Not only does it establish a new territory for future development,
culturally and politically, but it also welds the past
ideas of “Central” (a term suggesting a culture
of pre-communist times) and “Eastern” (a term
acknowledging the historical fact of communism) in a concept
that is geographically accurate.
[1]
Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New
York: Basic Books, 2001), 5.
[2] Ibed., 228.