Political movements weakened by nostalgia for obsolete forms need institutional memory to learn

Evidence

A key question is institutional memory; a system that has no memory cannot learn and will keep repeating the same mistakes. What’s crucial is that we give up any nostalgia for previous eras. Leftist politics has been weakened by its attachment to superseded forms of economic and political organisation. There’s a strange romance of glorious failure which we have to give up. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2232

Categorization

• APHORISMS: The ‘romance of glorious failure’ point is genuinely advice-like, but the passage is more diagnostic than prescriptive.
• XREF: connects to: Obsolete political formations persist beyond their historical moment. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1773; Defeated cultural movements can be re-potentiated from their archives after decades — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1369; Living memory of expulsion decays and must be replaced by institutional commemoration — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 957 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Defeated cultural movements can be re-potentiated from their archives after decades #corroborates (0.82) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1369
• Living memory of expulsion decays and must be replaced by institutional commemoration #exemplifies (0.80) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 957
• Subcultures survive political defeat through suspended animation or passage-finding rather than surrender #expands (0.80) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 477
• The left must abandon Fordist nostalgia while still embracing release from repetitive labor #exemplifies (0.80) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1585
• Institutional filing practices shape historical memory by highlighting some events and obscuring others #expands (0.78) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 153
• Self-conscious nostalgia can fuel revolution, not merely fascism #qualifies (0.74) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 172
• Nostalgia is an adjustment mechanism during crises #expands (0.72) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 540