Della nostalgia: la costruzione sociale di un sentire

Abstract

Nostalgia: the social construction of a feeling

The paper proposes an analysis of the feeling of nostalgia using a musical text, “Capo d'Africa” by Francesco De Gregori, as a theoretical pick to reflect on some forms of nostalgia that characterize the “mobile” everyday life of contemporary subjects. Taking advantage of the cognitive tools offered by the sociology of emotions and the sociology of everyday life, and through comparison with a series of cultural products (films, novels), the paper produces an analysis of the social construction of the feeling of nostalgia by delving into the different forms it takes according to contemporary individual and collective identities.
The main objective of the article is to demonstrate how nostalgia regularly feeds on memories and imagination, thus constructing forms of reworking the past and building the future based on encounters and experiences, whether lived or thought about. Because imagination and nostalgia are configured as two elements that cannot be separated in the constitution of parts of one's identity: they go rooted in the structuring of the self.