Exploring Nostalgia as a Methodological Tool to Study Populism

In my recent study of Talal Asad's insights, I stumbled upon a fascinating observation regarding the Romantic era and its impact on people's perception of the past. Asad highlighted how individuals interpreting literature during that period developed a distinct nostalgia for a bygone era, fostering a sense of disenchantment with their present reality. This sentiment often glorified certain aspects of the past, birthing the notion of revivalism.

Reflecting on Asad's thoughts about the Romantic era led me to hypothesize a crucial link between nostalgia and the surge of populism. In today's urban societies, shaped by modernization, experiences of conflict, terrorism, state-sponsored violence, and upheaval have created a yearning for a perceived 'better' past. This sentiment, pervasive in conversations I've had in Bangladesh and with some individuals in Downtown New York, manifests as a belief that the past was superior while an unending decline mars the present and future.

This narrative serves as fertile ground for the emergence of revivalist politics. The rapid pace of change in their familiar world, lacking stability, fuels a longing for a time perceived as more secure and comforting. This sentiment echoes in slogans like "Make America Great Again," which resonates not merely as a simplistic phrase but as a symbolic appeal to a traditional, legendary construct—a time of perceived stability.

The populace, fatigued by the repetitive rhetoric of the global war on terrorism, seeks a savior from the chaos. Simplified expressions of anger, humor, and sorrow find resonance among those uninterested in the eloquent yet complex rhetoric of liberal politicians. The straightforward language of the populace aligns with their mythic, legendary ideals, shaping their outlook on daily life and politics.

This longing for a past itself is not the making of nostalgia alone but a feeling that the world has lost its glory. This feeling about the past is the making of the narrative, remembrance and longing about the past expressed in the retelling of narratives about the mythic and legendary, thus shaping the repertoire of nostalgia. Their thoughts are highly influenced by the rhetoric used in the mythic stories and hence, nostalgia itself is a socio-religious and cultural construct.

Methodology in Understanding Societal Dynamics of Nostalgia

Asad's critique of ethnography as synonymous with anthropology raises pertinent questions about the broader scope of anthropology beyond ethnography alone. However, I diverge from Asad's view that labels ethnography as a pseudo-scientific method. The effectiveness of ethnography hinges on how one defines and distinguishes it within anthropology. Margaret Mead's subjective interpretation of Samoan people's coming of age does lend credence to Asad's argument. In my research, immersion in the social sphere has been crucial. It's through living within and understanding a community that I've gleaned insights into their culture and dynamics.

How can I collect data about nostalgia? Keeping in mind the criticism of ethnography by Talal Asad and also the criticism of Margaret Mead, it is important to also draw on research conducted by researchers who did not employ ethnographic research. When it comes to sourcing research data, the approach of scholars like Ali Riaz, who built theories based on secondary data and reports, does possess merit. Yet, Riaz's conclusions about the rise of radical Islam could have been enriched by firsthand participant observation among the Bangladeshi diaspora. My experiences within this community have revealed a complex narrative—where mosque construction abroad reflects not just religious fervor but also a demonstration of social status.

Maintaining unbiased fieldwork, building rapport, and employing ethnography yield valuable, real-time data. However, it's crucial to remain open to evolving conclusions based on findings. Mead sought solutions in Samoa for American youth problems, while Riaz's preconceived notions about Islamic terrorism and Wahhabism colored his interpretations. This underscores the importance of addressing biases in research.

Ethnography, despite its potential for bias and misrepresentation, remains an indispensable tool. It allows researchers to engage authentically with human subjects in their evolving cultural and historical context, capturing the nuances necessary for comprehensive analysis. Ethnography recognizes the humanity within the research subjects, acknowledging their changing realities and everyday experiences.

Therefore, broadly understanding the nostalgia of how people see the past and why they connect with Donald Trump would be an important aspect of the research I am building on. This would certainly refer to the idea of articulation outside the modernist-liberalist worldview and, hence, once again making folklore and ethnography an important arsenal for the research; although the discipline underwent and is undergoing existential question these days based on the question of decolonization, plurality and overall with the crisis marked by both tendencies of decolonization and pluralization.

Note on Poetry and Oral Narratives

Rasel Raju 

12.17.2023

Modern poetry has a prestigious role in how it surprises the normal perception by extending metaphorical extension to such abstract notions to create a specific sort of perception, shuddering a genuine reader to delight. This notion is essential, and it is also purely ingenious that a poet plays with word to make a dignified reader travel word by word, rhythm by rhythm, image by image, and conceit by conceit to perceive the metaphoric extension and feel delighted by that revelation through the metaphoric extension. The understanding of poetry itself thus has prestige as it is said to be a distinguished form of artistic craftsmanship that requires a particular reader to perceive the artistry word by word and travel along the poem to the metaphoric extension, thus allowing that construct that rhetoric to animate him with that particular notion. As a poet myself, I always subconsciously longed for and constructed metaphors that transcended sensual perception. As I write this, I have come up with a metaphor: "My life is inside me in meditation," or the other one that I wrote some time ago,

For ages have I been longing in the shore of this material life,

who shall take me to the other side?

I kept on cherishing, but, alas! I cannot dip in the river of love!

These metaphors are composed of metaphorically extending the material reality to the immaterial. The abstract feeling beyond language that one feels resonates at the moment of joy, of sorrow, of delight, of sadness, of nostalgia. This extends beyond how one perceives of things using one's senses and instead goes on to demonstrate how one feels inside. Poetry itself thus stands out in its most surprising form. Equally so, this form garners a feeling of pity but without any material reason behind it.

However, modern poetry, except mystic, Sufi, and baul poetry, is relatively secular in its form. This does not, however, mean that poetry is perceived in its modern form by everyone. And the very perception of a true reader, a genuine reader, is somehow a literate construct. Poetry is, as Borges mentioned in his lecture on The Riddle of Poetry, like a book; its taste does not lie in the fact that it is perceived as such but in the moment of a reader reading it otherwise, the poem is dead, and thus a reader enlivens the poetry of the written words.

But is that just genius that creates such metaphors? It would take much work to answer this question. But the relation of conquest, imagination, and wonders surrounding everyday life itself is the core which muses the poetic, the genius of humans to construct a relation, a connection that transcends the material and takes the human to the realm of joy, curiosity, sorrow, sadness, nostalgia, to the other world that is beyond language and beyond expression. This is where the transformation takes place and a modern reader while Li Po feels amazed as he reads,

Chuang Tzu in dream became a butterfly,

And the butterfly became Chuang Tzu at waking.

Which was the real—the butterfly or the man?

This notion of real by a poet hundreds of years ago surprises a modern reader because it pauses in him a notion of reality, a transitory moment where he lingers between the real and the other realm that language can't express. 

But when it comes from everyday life and says,

The moon's visible mark has a treelike shape and is home to Ajrail, the angel of death. The treelike shape is a banyan tree underneath which dwells the angel of death, and in its leaves are inscribed the names of each man and woman on earth. As soon as a leaf falls off, the person's name engraved on it dies. Because Ajrail picks up the leaf, reads the name on it, takes away the soul, and hands it before Allah. A new child is born when a new leaf buds in the banyan tree.

The metaphoric extension above connects the moon with the idea of a banyan tree and the notion of death as part of the other world. This triangular construct involves an explanation of what the moon is and what death and life are, besides locating the world of language that creates the bond. It does not seem so surprising and rather constitutes a form of reason that modernity frowns as ignorance and lack of reasoning. However, thinking about the moon and its gray marks from the world and coming up with the idea of a banyan tree, Ajrail, and life and death constitutes a communication surrounding both the world of language and senses and the world beyond language that feels, fears, and wonders about what lies in death and why are people born. If Li Po's poem asking about reality is ingenious, why isn't the construction of the narrative regarding the moon and its marks ingenious?

This is where the modern poetry and its readership come into question. Modern poetry and those of the ancient poets' readers celebrate come into notice because the contact a reader makes is made consciously that he is reading a poem, a collection of poems in book-length form, or a single poem shared in notes and/or scribbles in its commonly acknowledged form. In that sense, naming poetry as poetry itself does the trick and creates its appreciation and its patron. On the other hand, the rhetoric, the conceit, the metaphor that lie within the concept of the moon as the dwelling place of the angel of death does not mark its imprint as such because this is an everyday thing. It does not require one to sit down and read it in a textual form or recitational form recorded as audio by a professional reciter.

In this sense, poetry itself as a form or a structure somehow prevented modern readers from perceiving the poetry of everyday life, especially in religious and belief narratives. This has surmounted to an end of circulation of these constructs and, as such, among the literate tradition bearers who boast about progress and evolution and label the dying tradition as ignorance, unreason, and superstition created by the darkness of time, of a medieval barbaric era. But who could tell how precious those rhetoric, metaphor, conceit, imagination, and their extension to the world beyond language were?