Introduction

This chapter introduces the intersection between the three main concepts of this book: nostalgia, space and memory. In the opening pages, I illustrate how a complementary perspective uniting these three concepts has the potential to pose new questions and create new knowledge about how we perceive temporality and the transmission of memories. Much scholarship has been devoted to nostalgia, centralizing temporality and focusing on the desire to relive a past moment. While this temporal dimension of nostalgia is certainly important, its spatial side has been little considered, even though, I suggest, it is potentially of equal relevance: after all, space is one of the most common and capable memory triggers. Moreover, the space-nostalgia relationship is always steeped in political implications—especially when the memories evoked are related to a society’s thorny past. Following this reasoning, in the introduction I outline the general idea that structures the entire book: certain spaces can provide ways of indulging a desire to re-enact past experiences, allowing forms of consolation for nostalgic desires. The last part of the introduction provides an outline of the contents of each chapter, anticipating their main goals and presenting the case studies.