Playing cowboys and Indians

The therapeutics of nostalgia

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9642136
AutoresTrnka (0000-0002-4779-8035, University of Auckland, autor correspondente), Susanna Trnka
Ano2015
Volume57
Fascículo3-4
Páginas284-298
Data de publicação2015-10-26
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCanadian Slavonic Papers (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0008-5006 • E-ISSN: 2375-2475
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00085006.2015.1090759
OpenAlexW2273928882
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas23

The term nostalgia was initially coined to describe a newly recognized form of homesickness so acute it was considered often fatal. Over time, the medicalized origins of nostalgia have disappeared and it would be unthinkable today to find medical professionals diagnosing patients with this condition. Nonetheless, contemporary usage of the term continues to reverberate with negative overtones, often suggesting suffering, melancholy or loss. This article presents a counter-case of nostalgia, considering the possibilities of nostalgia as a mode of therapeutics. Focusing on Czech trampers’ re-enactments of the imagined environments, personas, and activities of the American “Wild West”, the author argues that Czechs’ nostalgic re-enactments of so-called “Indian” or “cowboy” ways of life open up an imaginative horizon conducive to promoting physical and mental well-being. Much like drama therapy, these enactments enable participants to momentarily embody foreign personas and experiment with forms of masculinity and relations to nature that might otherwise be foreclosed to them. Such acts of nostalgic play are indicative, the author argues, not of an unhealthy detachment from the present but of an agentive and highly creative means of using imagined pasts to recast one’s sense of self in the present and future

Aesthetics · Art · Drama · Humanities · Literature · Masculinity · Mode (computer interface · Persona · Sociology · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender Studies · History · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior · Psychology