Bourgeois nostalgia for nomadic life projects onto the displaced a fulfilment it denies them.

Evidence

The sedentary man envies the nomadic existence, the quest for fresh pastures, and the painted waggon is the house on wheels whose course follows the stars. Infantility, fixated in desultory motion, the joylessly restless, momentary urge to survive, stands in for the undistorted, for fulfilment, and yet excludes it, inwardly resembling the self-preservation from which it falsely promises deliverance. This is the circle of bourgeois nostalgia for naivety. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 181

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Echoes the earlier silence series’ finding that the privileged project onto the marginal something their own civilization destroys — same structure as noise-nostalgia.

Broader Connections

• Dispersed-village residents misperceive their own isolation as cosmopolitan adventurousness. #exemplifies (0.82) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 811