The "Algos" of Memories

<p class="ql-align-justify">Nostalgia emerges as an emotion and expands itself into memory. For Palestinians, forced into exile for centuries, nostalgic memory is a tool to articulate their traumatic past. Through nostalgia, they re-establish and re-stabilize their connection with Palestine as their lost homeland and a dreamland of return. Nostalgia, as an emotion, allows one to connect with their past; it supports the Palestinians scattered in different parts of the world to erase their spatiotemporal distances. Nostalgic memory serves as a critical analytical lens through which the literary representation of a historical trauma can be thematically examined. Svetlana Boym, in her theory of nostalgic memory, revolts against the autonomy of time over human lives. “Nostalgia,” for her, is a historical emotion that can create profound impacts on the future of past history. Boym proposes that restorative nostalgia focuses on the national past and future, while reflective nostalgia deals with individual and cultural memory. Most Palestinian memoirs clearly reflect one or the other type of nostalgic memory proposed by Boym. This article interrogates the dual modalities of nostalgia in Palestinian life writing through a comparative analysis of selected memoirs by Mourid Barghouti and Raja Shehadeh. Utilizing the framework of restorative and reflective nostalgia, the study argues that these tropes effectively articulate the collective national history as well as personal trauma. It contends that Shehadeh’s narrative aligns with a restorative impulse, while Barghouti’s work embodies a reflective meditation on memory and identity.</p>