Subjunctive nostalgia of postmemorial art: Remediated family archives in the Iranian diaspora

Abstract

Family archives have become the source of nostalgic 1.5 and second-generation diasporic cultural work as artists seeking to understand their family histories and to negotiate liminal identities remediate private home movies, photos, and postmemorial narratives. The liminal position of these artists leads to imaginative remediations that dwell in what could have been, prompting a subjunctive nostalgia for a future past cut short by revolution and war. By focusing on the online circulation of remediated pre-Revolutionary Iranian family photos and home movies, I demonstrate that digitized images of this particular time-space (the chronotope of pre-Revolution Iran) have become an evocative site of memory for the Iranian diasporic postgeneration. When these images are remediated through art and circulated digitally online, they move horizontally across the postgeneration along with the subjunctive nostalgia they prompt, creating opportunities for affiliation and recognition that contribute to diasporic collective memory.

Keywords

collective memory Iranian diaspora liminality nostalgia postmemory remediation

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