How do we recognize ourselves in the world around us, and in what ways do we strive to be recognized? Such questions point to an under-examined link between sexual and nostalgic desire. The second of these, the experience of longing for the past, has certainly received less discussion as an offshoot of the human search for recognition. Probably this is because of the stigma of failure inseparable from true nostalgic interludes. Nostalgia, after all, is simply a name for the present’s inadequacy in the face of the past. This air of failure, of falling short, relates to the search for recognition in a number of ways. It may, for example, stem from a deficit of recognition in one’s current circumstances, as compared to the recognition one received (or perceived oneself to receive) in the past. Alternatively, it may be bound up with the knowledge that one’s past is, by and large, private territory, closed-off terrain, which no one else can ever populate. On this second account, the increase of nostalgic sentiment with age simply tracks the increase of the stock of personal experiences which must forever remain more or less closed to others. Nostalgia swells because of the mounting defecit of interpersonal recognition of personal history. Clearly this applies to both the desire to be recognized, and the attempt to recognize oneself; as the surrounding world changes, the material imprint of experiences I regard as constitutive of myself fades, until I arrive at circumstances where I am not, and where I never was.
Sexuality interests me here only insofar as it connects with nostalgia. I don’t mean sexual nostalgia, though the experience of longing for a past partner is certainly common enough. The point, rather, is to ask whether sexual acts, of whatever kind, should be regarded as attempts to impose one’s entire past on another, to alleviate in an instant or an evening the debt which one’s present owes one’s past. If this is the case, we should think about the intersection of nostalgia and violence implied thereby. Not the violence of physical penetration (or equally, of non-penetrative sexual excitation), but the violence of this attempt to transgress the boundaries of normal interpersonal recognition, to exceed the typical level of understanding that exists between two people. Nostalgia, then, would include among its characteristics an overpowering instinct to impose on others a total and exhaustive familiarity with our own “selves.”
Nostalgia, if too often indulged in, can give rise to fascistic behaviors. History appears to bear this out Here again, the parallel to sexuality is apparent. In this light, the old lament, “you can’t repeat the past,” should perhaps be refigured as an ethical imperative: You can’t repeat the past, and more importantly, you must not try to.
