ABSTRACT
The chapter deals with two questions: how many types of nostalgia are there? And how can we differentiate between them? In the current literature on this topic, two approaches are frequently advocated. Some suggest that there are two clearly delineated kinds of nostalgia: first, there is personal nostalgia that is based on memories of events the nostalgic subject has lived through. Second, there is historical nostalgia that is based on the subject longingly imagining some past era (without having personally experienced it). This position has been challenged, partly because the differentiation between memory and imagination is often considered less clear-cut than assumed in this approach. Thus, it has been claimed that all cases of nostalgia draw on some form of mental simulation. In this chapter, I challenge both positions and argue for yet another approach to the phenomenon. I suggest that the term “nostalgia” is characterized by semantic openness. The different cases of nostalgia we encounter are not linked through some common core, but rather merely exhibit family-resemblance relations.
