What is the Nonastalgia?
Martin Škabraha
Anthology of Forgotten Thoughts
You wrote: "Nonastalgia is a longing for the (especially early) nineties, not only in the sense of one time period, but especially in the sense of a certain space-time. Nonastalgia is paradoxically a form of so-called ostalgia, i.e. a longing for the world of the "real socialist" East. However, this is not in the form of state socialism itself, but in the form of ideas about the West that people under the dictatorship of one party had created, which were more a set of projections and symbols with fixed meanings than lived experience of the complex and changing reality of Western societies."
1.Linking the concepts of "nonastalgia" and "ostalgia", where you interpret "longing" for the early 90s as a form of utilitarian conservatism, typical (perhaps?) for the generation entering a new decade and a new "space-time" after 1989. The ideas we had about the "free West" were often very naive and mediated, and the confrontation with open culturality was confronting and frustrating for part of society. It took several years for the cultural, political and economic elites to get their bearings. Hence the adjectives we often associate with the 90s such as "free" and "wild". Are your critical words about nonastalgia related to the process of "neo-normalisation" that Central and Eastern European societies went through around 1995?
Weren't the first years after 89 a time of change and, even if perhaps naive and joyful, expectations linked to the notion of a fairer world that might finally come?
2. Locally and globally, the last decade of the 20th century is in some ways fascinating because it was unpredictable. Parallel attempts to revise old dogmas and to enforce them have emerged or surfaced (similar as in '68). This was in a situation where the systems of both former hegemons were in reconstruction and therefore weakened. The consolidation or re-establishment of order in the mid-1990s may, from today's perspective, seem like the only possible solution. But is it in fact? Is the then and current re-capitalization and retardation in Central Europe related to the phenomenon of self-colonization, self-colonizing mechanisms, i.e. poor capacity for self-reflection (according to Kiossev)?
I assume that by "neo-normalization" you mean certain stabilization and perhaps even banalization of the political landscape following a period that was, on the contrary, characterized by (post-)revolutionary dynamics and some room for socio-economic experimentation (such as the coupon privatization); the big battles had been fought and now it was more about consolidating the positions gained. It is difficult to associate the beginning of this "fortification" process with a specific year, but in the case of the Czech Republic we can indeed speak of the emergence of "normal" European politics around the mid-1990s, for two reasons: firstly, after the division of Czechoslovakia (1 January 1993), the nationalism of one state-forming ethnic group, unhindered by the specificities of the Slovak partner nation, established itself as the overall framework of Czech politics. Secondly, the 1996 elections confirmed the long-standing political marginalization of the pre-1989 dissident circles: from now on, Czech politics would be dominated by two main actors, one representing the right (Václav Klaus), the other the left (Miloš Zeman), and both more technologists of power than idealists. Morally based criticism of these two figures and their political practices – including ethnic nationalism – would develop, but despite their considerable intellectual weight these figures wouldn’t be very successful politically (Václav Havel as the president had limited powers), for which some of them compensated by leaning towards the project of unilateral American hegemony as a projection of “morally based” politics – a fight for freedom and democracy worldwide.
My notion of nonastalgia is really meant to refer to the period before the onset of this stabilization phase, but the real point lies elsewhere. In fact, as critical as the term neo-normalization is, it actually describes the return of the Czech Republic from the mythical Kundera’s “abduction” by the barbarians of Moscow – the abducted piece of the West is now returning "to Europe", integrating back into its home land mass – all the more so because now, with Slovakia gone, it does not reach that far east as the borders of Ukraine. This return to (assumed) European normality, which may be perceived as a resignation to the more ambitious visions of some dissident circles, seemed to most crucial players as a historic victory, a happy ending, albeit with some bitter manifestations (“child diseases”).
Nonastalgia is not meant as a reaction to neo-normalization, but rather as a reaction to the fact that the hard-fought normality is being lost again: give us back our "normal world"! In this sense, of course, it is a conservative phenomenon. It should be added, however, that conservatives do not see every historical change as evil; what they really do is that they defend the achievements of the last great change, of which they feel themselves to be the actors or at least the heirs; they fear that further changes will diminish its value (and thus, of course, weaken their position or authority).
The “nine” to which the word nonastalgia refers is not only the one that stands at the beginning of the number ninety – that is, the first years of restored capitalism – but also the number that stands at the end of the last “communist year”: 1989. Part of the nonastalgia in my conception is the longing for this moment in which Central/Eastern Europeans suddenly became heroes of the West (co-creators of its victory over the Soviet empire) – the West being, of course, largely a country of their imagination, not a society with which they had real experience. In other words: nonastalgia is a longing for a moment in which it was possible to subscribe to the West, even to become a Western icon, without having to learn/be trained in what it actually means to "be Western" – that is, without having to undergo a cultural self-colonization process (to relate to your second question).
But even this is not enough to fully explain it. The self-colonizing framework does not call into question the status and authority of those who count themselves among the winners of 1989; it allows them to be agents of cultural hegemony vis-à-vis the domestic audience; society as such is the object of cultural "re-education", while they can style themselves as educators. The problem arises when they no longer understand the West, whose historical superiority they wanted to represent, or have trouble accepting its changing face – it no longer seems "normal" to them. They face more and more disturbing paradoxes, perhaps the greatest of which comes with the discourse of decolonization: part of the ideological self-colonization of Central and Eastern Europeans is to accept co-responsibility for the crimes of colonization that Western countries have committed against the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa and Asia.
In conjunction with other issues – gender equality, ecological crisis, etc. – the discourse of decolonization calls into question the basic moral scheme of Czech (Central European) exponents of the "normal West": the establishment of national memory in the double concept of victims and heroes. In this memory, Czech society is understood as a victim of the totalitarian regime, socialist ideology, Russian imperialism, all this monstrous historic abnormality; and at the same time as an heir of the heroes of the anti-communist resistance.
The mainland of the West, to which the Czech lump has rejoined after a period of its “abduction”, is today itself more and more integrated into the common world of all continents, and the Czech environment is thus exposed to a movement of people, goods and ideas that was unimaginable in 1989 – or was just an idea, without far reaching material and social consequences. In 1989, the West listened enthusiastically to the testimony of those who had just freed themselves from the oppression of the "evil empire" and who were telling the story of suffering and heroism. It was a moment of post-communist exceptionalism – in time and in space: fight is always site-specific, and collective memory monumentalizes its local context. Today, that voice is just one voice among many, kind of de-localized. It must struggle for attention against others, especially those whose oppression has not yet ended; we are no longer just victims and heroes, but also accomplices and villains; we are no longer just freedom-loving democrats and humanists, we are – supposedly – racists, exploiters, carriers of patriarchy and perhaps even supporters of genocide.
We were champions once. But was it really us?
