Fausto Colombo Catholic University of Milan - Italy

1. The past is a shared country.How social media collaborate to the definition of the “nostalgic” genre Fausto Colombo Catholic University of Milan - Italy

2. Starting point: a sociology of nostalgia • F. Davis,, Yearning for Yesterday. A Sociology of Nostalgia, 1979 • D. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, 1985 • R. Robertson, “After Nostalgia? Wilful Nostalgia and the Phases of Globalization”, 1990 • C. Shaw, & M. Chase, (eds.), The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia, 1989 • B.S. Turner, “A note on Nostalgia”, 1987; “Nostalgia, Postmodernism and the Critique of Mass Culture”, 1988 • (The past is a foreign country is the beginning of The Go-Between, novel written by L.P. Hartley)

3. Defining a nostalgic psychological attitude • Relation between an individual and her/his personal past (childhood or adolescence) • Subjective memory (not necessarily shared with others) • Positive attitude towards this past • (sometimes) Fetish behaviour (example: collectionism)

4. Defining a nostalgic social attitude • Relation between a generation and its collective past (the historical moment when people of a generation were young) • Collective memory (necessarily shared with others) • Positive attitude towards this past as a way of (collective) identity building • Social (in-group) discourse (“The way we were”)

5. Defining a nostalgic genre(i.e. in american cinema ‘70) • Media discourses and texts wherein nostalgia is the presumed attitude of the target • Target generation represented • in the present, living in nostalgic attitude • or in the past the generational target is nostalgic for • The past is represented mainly through a “fetish” representation of the objects, social rituals an values of everyday life

6. Nostalgic genre in italian traditional media (for boomers’ generation) Some examples where the defined/described/imaginated past correspond to the 60s (the youth of the boomers generations) A movie: Sapore di mare (1983) A Tv series: Raccontami (2006/07)

7. Critical analysis • The past is described like a place without conflicts, where the only things to take care of are personal problems, personal /very general) ethics, and so on • The past is evoked by the presence of material/cultural products (design objects, songs, public characters…)

8. Nostalgic genre in italian web 2.0 User generated contents about 60’, 70’ http://www.pagine70.com/ http://xoomer.virgilio.it/mic.perrone/Anni70.htm http://www.doktorlove.com/annisettanta.html

9. Critical analysis • The past is evoked representing cultural products (design objects, songs, public characters…) as a links to the collective memory • Basically, the historical perspective is absent: when there is an historical approach, it is modulated following an “evenementielle” storytelling • 70s are involved in the process of “nostalgization” through a discourse translating them in 60s-like decade

10. Synthesis In nostalgic genre there are no real differences between traditional media narrative texts and web 2.0 UCG: • Representation of the past throughout representation of material or cultural products (i.e. industrial mass production) • Substitution of historical perspective with • Pseudohistorical background (in traditional media) • Pseudohistorical tales (in UCG) • Absence of narrative perspective and substitution with “amateur collector” emotion

11. The time-line representation in italian nostalgic discourse Removed periods 70s 90s Social conflicts Politicalconflicts 60s 80s Today Time-structure of nostalgic ideology

12. Understanding nostalgic discourse • Media genre show itself as a part of wider social discourse or social imaginary • The “nostalgia effect” could be represented as a ideology of time (strategy of cultural egemony), where traditional media play a crucial role in create • Material conditions (cultural objectes, representation and memory of material objects) • Ideological storytelling (in contrast to historical discourse as a form of knowledge) • The UCG nostalgic genre do not show real differences from the traditional media one.

14. References • Colombo, F. & Fortunati (eds), L., Broadband Society and Generational Changes, Peter Lang 2011 • Davis, F., Yearning for Yesterday. A Sociology of Nostalgia, The Free Press, N.Y. 1979 • Jameson, F., Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Duke University Press. 1991. • Lowenthal, D. The Past is a Foreign Country, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985 • Morreale, E., L’invenzione della nostalgia. Il vintage nel cinema italiano e dintorni, Donzelli, Roma 2009 • Robertson, R., After Nostalgia? Wilful Nostalgia and the Phases of Globalization, in B.S. Turner, Theories on Modernity and Postmodernity, Sage 1990, 45-61 • Shaw, C. & Chase, M. (eds.), The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia, Manchester University Press 1989 • Turner, B.S. , A note on Nostalgia, “Theory, Culture and Society”, 4, 1987, 147-156; Nostalgia, Postmodernism and the Critique of Mass Culture, , “Theory, Culture and Society”, 5, 1988, 509-526

15. Thank you for your attention! fausto.colombo@unicatt.it http://www.centridiricerca.unicatt.it/osscom