WHAT WAS REALLY GOOD ABOUT THOSE OLD DAYS?
RICHY SRIRACHANIKORN is a PhD Sociology student studying
with Dr. BART SIMON at Concordia University, Montréal​​​​
He is interested in how nostalgia is used as a method for -- but also a resistance -- to the hegemony of social time narratives.
THESE DAYS, WHAT ARE WE TOLD IS GOOD TO HAVE?
Richy's current research agenda is three-fold:
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I. How is nostalgia used to reinforce the social/personal use of time narratives?​​
WHICH INSTITUTIONS CARVE THESE TIME STORIES?
II. Whom and what is excluded from these time narratives?
Socially withdrawn people stigmatized for not doing or desiring what normal adults should do -- graduate, work, marry, kids...
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Ambitious and energetic seniors who are told to stay put as retirement is a nostalgic time where one settles sedentarily
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Mid career women who are bombarded with family nudges or ads to halt work and be nostalgic about future motherhood
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Single parents who cannot pursue their nostalgic dreams due to overwhelming responsibility -- where do they hide that box of things belonging to another life?
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the list goes on...
​​Presentation on the nostalgia time narratives against socially withdrawing people, known primarily as Hikikomori in Japan and increasingly around the world.
Canadian Game Studies Association, 2024
THOSE WHO ARE EXCLUDED, NOSTALGIC FOR WHAT?
III. Can nostalgia become a counter-practice to the hegemony it created?
Yes: nostalgia is a welcoming point of entry for participants of my research as it does not shackle them as failures, or people who have ran out of time to do what they want;
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I do not mark them against the societal clock of what one should have achieved by this age, but highlight what they have done to combat, cope with, or reject this mandate.
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Nostalgia has also been a fantastic tool for communicating research to the public:
Founded at the Milieux Institute in 2022,
the NOSTAGAIN NETWORK hosts
yearly symposiums and workshop inviting artists, scholars, and the public to
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share what nostalgia means to them
via creative practice, scientific research, reflections on culture or
lived experiences, and community.
I also work at the Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) research lab to think about how video games can operate as a conversational medium to get people thinking critically about their nostalgia:
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other than memory, what other things are involved n making their digital nostalgia possible? do we acknowledge the implicit work of these things?
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why is nostalgia so rampant in today's culture? who profits from our quest to relive personal memory?
Collaborations and Memberships
