The rhetoric of nostalgia: postcolonial Alexandria between uncanny memories and global geographies

Abstract: Memory, nostalgia and place are subjects of increasing scholarly interest. While invoked by cultural geographers as a ‘productive force’ moulding urban landscape, nostalgia often remains an unexamined, a priori concept. Through the exploration of different reactions to the spatialized history of postcolonial Alexandria, I consider nostalgia as a fluid, multifaceted, and performative force operating at different scales and levels: on one hand, an unconscious phenomenon in the years following Egyptian nationalization, intertwining with the uncanny and bringing to surface ‘unwanted’ memories; on the other, a powerful device increasingly exploited by urban developers and the state for the construction of a ‘cosmopolitan memory’. While the former kind of nostalgia presents itself as an effective counterpart to the colonial ‘cartographic gaze’, the latter responds to the logics of cultural consumption, and constitutes a strategy adopted in an increasing number of former cosmopolitan citi

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Postprint ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Cultural Geographies ; 13 (2006) 2 ; 207-238

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (when): 2006
• Creator: Dora, Veronica Della

Further information

• DOI: 10.1191/1474474006eu357oa
• URN: urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-232751
• Rights: Open Access unbekannt; Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 14.08.2025, 10:47 AM CEST