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Reclaiming nostalgia in educational politics and practice: counter-memory, aporetic mourning, and critical pedagogy

In this essay, the author attempts to complicate the reading of nostalgia in the cultural politics of education, arguing that the blind rhetoric of nostalgia for an idealized past can and should be critiqued in productive ways. Despite some literature addressing the consequences of nostalgia in the context of teaching, little has been done towards the direction of critically examining nostalgia in relation to the controversial issues of national memory and historical trauma and how those influence educational politics and practice. Central to the author's argument is that nostalgia has multiple meanings, some of which promote nationalist agendas while others offer opportunities for transformation. One way to begin the process of reclaiming nostalgia in education is to shift the discourse from restorative nostalgia to reflective nostalgia. The constructs of counter-memory and aporetic mourning provide useful theoretical lenses through which reflective nostalgia can promote productive ways of addressing national memory and historical trauma.