Nostalgia and Constructions of National Identities

In his talk, Alexei Kazakov proposes a new framework for understanding how national identity has taken shape since the late twentieth century. Grounding his argument in theories of postmodernity that account for shifts in the experience of time, notably that of nostalgia, he shows how notions of national identity "fixed in time" have become increasingly incongruent with accelerating change and result in a sense of cultural dissonance. As he engages this perspective to reassess the status of the 1972 Summit Series – the hockey tournament between Canada and the Soviet Union which has loomed large in Canadian national identity –, the speaker evolves a conception of national identity suited to the current historical moment.