Consumer objects occupy
Introduction 9
the border between a longing for a style of life under communism, and a
capitalist nostalgia organized around an aesthetic of kitsch. Rather than
a desire to revive the socialist regime itself, consumption of both these
kinds of products should be interpreted as a political device for Easterners
to position themselves in a fi eld of cultural production dominated by the
West. Bach’s study of the re-evaluation and re-appropriation of GDR objects
further teases out the complex process by which nostalgia intervenes as a
vector of cultural transmission.
The relationship existing between objects of nostalgia, cultural transmission
and trauma lies at the heart of Joseph Josy Lévy and Inaki Olazabal’s
chapter. Taking as case the traumatic exile of Spanish Jews in 1492 after the
Catholic kings religiously unifi ed the kingdom, they return to the very fi rst
meaning of nostalgia as a longing for a lost geographical home. Scattered,
Jewish exiles reorganized their communities in new countries and kept over
centuries a rich heritage by which nostalgia for Spain was maintained alive
and reactivated in daily and ritual occasions. In memoirs, historical texts,
folklore and contemporary novels (like Marcos Aguinis’ Gesta del marrano,
Eliette Abecassis’ Sefarad and Jorge Semprun’s Twenty Years and One Day),
Levy and Olazabal scrutinize the persistent presence of La llave, the key
of the lost house that Sephardic Jews are said to have carried throughout
their exile, a powerful symbol of their ancestral house, evoking a longing
for Spain. And the key continues its social life, ‘formalized as heritage’ producing
‘legitimacy through aestheticization’ (Roy 1994). It is now a cultural
icon publicly mobilized by Spanish politicians to restore relationships with
Jewish communities around the world and used by national and international
agencies to develop tourism.
* * *
Third, far from being a feeling hidden in the confi nes of the self only,
nostalgia is ‘a force that does something’ (Dames 2010: 272). Such a transformative
aspect of nostalgia is elegantly captured by Milan Kundera in
The