Sin Blaché > Quotes

“You said nostalgia can be a response to a sense of dislocation. And your book says it’s an act of creation, right? It brings lost things to life, things from your past, things you remember. And the act of nostalgia forges a link between you now and a past self that’s always partly imagined. It’s comforting. Gives you a sense of continuity. Makes you feel you’re the same person through time.”
― Sin Blaché, Prophet

“One model of nostalgia sees it as a psychological response to trauma and discontinuity. A defence mechanism. Big social changes can conjure it. Wars, revolutions, 9/11. People feel dislocated, so they conjure an imaginary past they long to return to. This fantasy place of safety. So nostalgia is emotional and psychological, but it’s also political. Highly manipulatable, either politically or in the marketplace. And that’s what my book’s about. Specifically, on how material history and nostalgia and politics coincide.” She waves her hands around the room. “All this stuff, you know?”
― Sin Blaché, Prophet

“She takes it, flicks through the photographs of the objects picked up at the base. Rao sees her linger on a toy rifle, a red velvet comforter, a plush rabbit, a rocking chair. “Yeah,” she says. “Beautifully curated. Makes me think of the Valley of Lost Things. There’s a chapter called that in my book. It’s a literary device, a place characters visit in stories and find all the things people have lost. These, though”—her voice turns speculative—“seem to me not so much lost things as things made of loss. Where are these from?”
― Sin Blaché, Prophet

“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently. —David Graeber”
― Sin Blaché, Prophet