Postmodernism and Fashion in the 20th Century
Words: Anja Cronberg, Image: Martina Hoogland Ivanow
Excerpt:
“In nineteenth century America nostalgia had become something shameful, a sign of weakness and regressive attitudes. Soldiers who were affected by the disease were, on doctor’s orders, subjected to hounding and ridicule by their fellow soldiers in the hope that this would make them more manly and less emotional. With the passing of time, however, nostalgia turned from a disease curable with a return to the homeland to an incurable yearning for something much less tangible. In the modern age this ‘hypochondria of the heart’ , can be defined as the human capacity to grieve over times passed, in a manner much less concrete than the longing for an actual time or place that has ceased to be. Nostalgia, the ravages of longing for something beyond one’s reach, has become an epidemic of the modern age.”
