Apropos of nothing in particular

[sabotabby]

Is there a term for nostalgia for things you haven't actually experienced?

Comments

[seaya.livejournal.com]

I believe the Brazilian term "saudades" would cover it (& other similar sentiments).

[agatharuncible.livejournal.com]

No, "saudade" is used more or less as "missing someone/something" is. Technically, it's used to express a stronger sentiment but it's also used casually to express anything you miss to any degree. It also usually implies that you miss someone or something you know.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I had a conversation with a Brazilian once where they said nobody else had any word like saudades, and I was asking them about how the Welsh word hiraeth compares. It was interesting.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I get extreme hiraeth. It is a wonderful word.

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

fauxstalgia?

anostalgia?

pseudostalgia?

parastalgia?

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

howifeelwhenilistentoboardsofcanadastalgia?

[whichferdinand.livejournal.com]

"Romanticism" captures a bit more than that, but I'd say it basically does mean nostalgia for things you haven't actually experienced.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Not long ago I read a SF book by Keith Roberts called Molly Zero, which takes place in a future Britain that is highly repressive and full of internal controls and divisions. In the later section of the book the heroine falls in with a bunch of urban terrorists who are actually rich younguns playing a role (radical chic and all that) and one of the fatherly figures winched down from the ceiling to explain things during the book uses the term "leidensnied" of them. He explains this is a German word used in the late 20th century which means "pain" (leid or leiden) "envy": an appropriation of pain repression or disadvantage you have never actually felt because of your privilege or station in life.
It seems a useful word with no equivalent in English (something like "white guilt" doesn't exactly cover it), but was never in circulation - it seems to have been the invention of one English writer, Jillian Becker, who wrote a crap book about the German RAF in the late 70s and which Keith Roberts must have read before writing his book.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Well as there's Jamais vu and Déjà entendu, so maybe there's a French term. Or one could invent a new compound German word. Looking around I found Nostalgia of Realpolitik and two references to Imagined Nostalgia here and here.

Or maybe it's the nosomania of philopatridomania - which I base on Nostalgia and Its Discontents [pdf doucment link]:

The word “nostalgia” comes from two Greek roots, nostos meaning “return home” and algia “longing.” I would define it as a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy. Nostalgic love can only survive in a long-distance relationship...a superimposition of two images—of home and abroad, of past and present, of dream and everyday life.
...
The word “nostalgia,” in spite of its Greek roots, did not originate in ancient Greece. "Nostalgia" is only pseudo-Greek, or nostalgically Greek. The word was coined by the ambitious Swiss student Johannes Hofer in his medical dissertation in 1688. (Hofer also suggested nosomania and philopatridomania to describe the same symptoms; luckily, these failed to enter common parlance.) Contrary to our intuition, “nostalgia” came from medicine..in the seventeenth century, nostalgia was considered to be a curable disease, akin to a severe common cold. Swiss doctors believed that opium, leeches, and a journey to the Swiss Alps would take care of nostalgic symptoms. Among the first victims of the newly diagnosed disease were various displaced people of the seventeenth century: freedom-loving students from the Republic of Berne studying in Basel, domestic help and servants working in France and Germany, and Swiss soldiers fighting abroad. The epidemic of nostalgia was accompanied by an even more dangerous epidemic of “feigned nostalgia,” particularly among soldiers tired of serving abroad.

The full thing is pretty interesting.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

ooh I looked up "nosomania" in G.K. Chesterton story on my Kindle last night!

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

Can you give an example? Are we talking a sort of "Miniver Cheevy" experience?

[sabotabby]

Yep. But for any era. The discussion that started me thinking about it was about the 80s. (Which I did, of course, experience, but at a much younger age than most of the people I know.)

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

On reading your post I thought of the 80s, not because I have any nostalgia for them, but because I have been wondering about how every generation seems to get a sort of nostalgia for the period just before their time, and wondering if there is a word for it - mine was the 70s, and friends I have in their mid-20s ish go on about the 80s. Though it could just be that the 80s are in fashion at the moment.

I think of the 70s as a beautiful haze in sepia, though people who remember it more for real probably don't feel the same. I remember the 80s for real as a dreadful time of shell suits and Thatcherite consumerism, yuppies, bah, and everyone being spotty and grotty (but that could be early teens).

[sabotabby]

I think of the 70s as a beautiful haze in sepia, though people who remember it more for real probably don't feel the same.

Me too, and guaranteed they weren't like that. Whereas during the gritty 80s, it was anti-Thatcherite punks looking cool in grimy alleyways and everything was high-contrast black-and-white, yeah?

The Kids These Days seem to have a nostalgia for the disposable plastic crap of the 90s and 00s, which I attribute to the fact that my generation hogs the internet. But it could be that the things just barely remembered are more powerful somehow.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

that does me 'ead in because the 90s were yesterday, and anyway I don't remember them having anything about them whatsoever. I mean, here they were just oh. Just relief not to be 80s, really!

I think I grew up in the place that was meant to be where all the cool UK stuff happened in the 80s - Covent Garden in central London, unless it happened elsewhere like Manchester maybe, but I was so completely uncool and unobservant that I missed it altogether. I remember political stuff and awful big hair and we had a lot of bleepy electronic stuff though.

[ironed_orchid]

I was cool in the '80s, in the sense that I was a weirdo loner who hung out with other weirdo loners at high school and wore great clothes which were a mishmash of 50s and 60s retro with 80s diy punk and listened to great bands and had AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE to do with mainstream '80s stuff like, oh, I dunno, pretty much anything that was in the top 40*, Benetton, pastel colours, high riding one piece swimsuits, padded shoulders, surf culture, high waisted tight acid wash denim jeans, movies like Top Gun and um, that other one with Tom Cruise it in.

The '90s were a glorious time when the '80s were over and flared pants were back in and everyone was young and pretty, especially me.

* there were some exceptions, but not many

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

ooh yes I do remember flares suddeny being back in, as I'd worn them all along and suddenly no longer had the piss taken out of me! Brown cord flares, always my favourites.

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a bit of retro 80s nostalgia music - new music going for that synthpop sound.

I've described Freezepop as "If Liz Phair fronted Men Without Hats."

[ironed_orchid]

That's adorable.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

Whereas during the gritty 80s, it was anti-Thatcherite punks looking cool in grimy alleyways and everything was high-contrast black-and-white, yeah?

Yes, it was just like that. Also, we all wore long dark trenchcoats and no matter where we were, the wind was always blowing them behind us in a dramatic fashion. ;)

[sabotabby]

Yes! How did you manage that? The wind has gotten suckier along with music over the years.

[twiin.livejournal.com]

"daft punk"

[sabotabby]

http://instantrimshot.com/

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

If you find out, do let me know. I have that feeling often. The 1920s seems to bring out in me. Art Deco.......*sigh*

[sabotabby]

Well, there are several good suggestions upthread. Also, hell yes.

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

Yes, and I'm yearning to learn what it is.