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Malik Ozair Zafar

2024-02-0092

Farhana Shahzad

SS 100 - Writing and Communication

5 November 2020

Word count: 1485

A critique on the dangers of nostalgia: we need to imagine a brighter future by

Mohsin Hamid
With his article on the dangers of nostalgia: we need to imagine a brighter future,

published in The Guardian, award-winning British-Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid aims to

tackle the rise of nostalgia and the ever-growing importance of new stories and storytellers.

Hamid is an award-winning journalist named one of the world’s 100 Leading Global

Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine in 2013. He has lived a life divided, moving from the

UK, to Pakistan, to America, and it is this diversity that he brings in his writings. In this

article, Hamid combines his lived experiences with numerous modern and contemporary

examples to weave a complex narrative of storytelling’s importance to combat nostalgia. He

strengthens his case by asking multiple rhetorical questions and using a broad range of

examples, challenging the reader’s preconceived notions; however, the article presents its

thesis statement very late, is susceptible to the author’s bias, and lacks depth in analyzing

why the world exists as it does.

A significant strength of the article is how it actively engages with the reader.

Throughout the article, Hamid asks the reader to involve themselves within the text by asking

us rhetorical questions. “Why are we so attracted to nostalgia today?” is a central question at

the heart of the text, which he then goes on to answer for us (Hamid). He argues that the pace
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of technological development has changed, but it is the act of asking the audience to question

their own belief on why the rise of nostalgia is an occurring phenomenon that drives our

interest. Hamid proceeds to ask a barrage of rhetorical questions to emphasize further how

disjointed our reality has become. Through this device, he can teleport from various ideas,

from talking about great paternal love through electronic devices to the notion of solidarity

within one’s religious and ethnic identity (Hamid). Hamid makes us question how these

straightforward everyday ideas lie at the intersection of complex historical phenomena. By

keeping examples broad, nostalgia becomes more critical, a problem not restricted by

geographical distance, creed, or religion but one that affects us all as a species. This helps

explain to the reader just how all-encompassing the desire for our collective past is, thus

contextualizing the story teller’s importance in the 21st century. By providing this broad

context through these rhetorical questions and examples, Hamid teleports us to his world and

sets up his thesis statement. Using the rhetorical questions, Hamid also appeals to logos. The

rhetorical questions appeal to our sense of logic; the question itself is the reasoning to make

us aware of how a particular aspect of the world works. The use of personal anecdotes also

adds pathos to the article, as we sympathize with not just Hamid but all the countless

storytellers like him who use stories as a way to imagine a better future. Thus, the text’s

language, combined with examples and anecdotes, makes the article more compelling to us as

the reader.

The article uniquely explains its central thesis late in the text. Hamid purposefully

delays his thesis statement towards the end of the article, explaining what storytelling means

to him through his life journey before stating the real power of stories. This delayed thesis

helps Hamid craft a world through the above-mentioned use of examples and rhetorical

questions that is vibrant and, at once, believable. We are likely to believe the characterization

of nostalgia running rampant and the collective dread we share at our uncertain future. The
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delayed thesis also allows Hamid to systemically build up the link between our collective

anxiety for the future and how that leads to “nostalgia traps” (Hamid). It is only after that

Hamid has convinced us of this that he introduces the power of the story; layering his ideas in

this specific way adds to the article’s logos, as he is taking us step by step through each

assumption.

The late thesis, however, carries with it certain drawbacks. Hamid builds this

contextualization of nostalgia in the modern world but has very little time to explain how we

leave this nostalgia trap. He explains storytellers have “the power to liberate us from the

tyranny of what was and is,” but spends very little elaborating on how this can be

accomplished (Hamid). Hamid writes that now more than ever, “a radical engagement with

the future” is necessary, yet what this radical engagement looks like is scarcely described

(Hamid). We are left to wonder how precisely this engagement happens and its chance of

success against the wave of our haunted past that Hamid had extensively described. Thus, we

are left with an explanation that does not answer the harms highlighted in the text itself. This

weakens the overall strength of Hamid’s case as he fails to respond to how his ideas can help

improve the world, leading to the question of how realistic the world that Hamid has

presented is in the first place.

The text is filled with anecdotes from Hamid’s own life. This helps paint a more vivid

picture of storytellers’ life and explains the expectations Hamid has of writers. However, the

idea that we harken back to a past now more than say 20 to 30 years ago isn’t one that Hamid

rigorously proves. While examples such as the election of Donald Trump and ISIS show a

geographical spread of parties that feed on a great imagined past, this does not show how

many such groups exist quantitatively. The use of statistical examples to illustrate the rise of

a society that values the past more than the present or, for that matter, the future would have

added logos to the article and cemented populist parties’ rise to a desire for the past. Hamid
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tells us that “We are drawn.. to imagined memories,” yet the ‘we’ in the discussion isn’t an

aspect that the article goes into detail (Hamid). Are these “projects of restoration” limited to

geography, and if not, what is the impact on developing nations where the notions of

technological change are relatively recent? The abundant use of examples, rhetorical devices,

and anecdotes means that Hamid doesn’t have the time to give nuances and statistical

analysis on the prevalence of nostalgia in the 21st century. The use of anecdotes to explain a

storyteller’s responsibility also means that the article may be susceptible to Hamid’s own

bias. The definition of an artist is now limited to one of a conception similar to Hamid, a

“solo inventor… of humanity’s narrative imagination,” limiting who can and cannot be an

artist (Hamid). Would great works of art like The odyssey and The Illiad by Homer not be

considered art because they too harken back to an imagined past, rather than conceive a

future as Hamid so desires? This difference between nostalgia and a homage to the past is not

a division that Hamid delves into.

Hamid stresses the importance of technological change behind this unmooring from

reality. However, he leaves this analysis here and doesn’t expand on what factors propelled

this technological change; if this change was so bad for humanity, why hasn’t it slowed

down. More importantly, this technological change has come from the direct consequences of

capitalism, yet Hamid makes no mention of this. What if capitalism has caused us to become

unmoored from reality and not as Hamid theorizes from technological change. We return to

our past with objects of pastiche due to fear about how technological progress will

metamorphose us into unrecognizable beings. Without explaining why technological growth

happens, the ideas of “Radical politically engaged fiction” become relevant (Hamid). What

does this kind of extreme fiction look like when storytellers themselves have fallen into

“Nostalgia traps.” Hamid also fails to gauge the difficulty of such a task. If it is indeed

capitalism behind our collective yearning for the past, how difficult is it to break out of this
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cycle? Mark fisher once wrote, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine

the end of capitalism,” giving us some idea of how difficult it is for artists to create stories

independent of this nostalgic cycle (2). Due to introducing his thesis statement so late, Hamid

spends very little time explaining how other artists can help tell their stories and how they too

can break out of the chains of the past.

Even though the article does not go into detail in analyzing why the world is at its

current state, lacks statistical backing, and is late in presenting its thesis statement, it does

well to paint a believable picture of the current status quo. Hamid crafts a compelling

narrative where storytellers like himself are at the vanguard of humanity, defending us from

our past, helping us imagine a better future. The article strategically layers arguments,

convincing the reader to believe this collective yearning for a history, connecting that to our

great fear of a future and giving us hope in the form of storytellers like himself.
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Works Cited
Fisher, Mark. “It’s Easier to Imagine the End of the World ....” Capitalist Realism: Is There

No Alternative?, by Mark Fisher, Zero Books, 2010, pp. 2–2.

Hamid, Mohsin. “Mohsin Hamid on the Dangers of Nostalgia: We Need to Imagine a

Brighter Future.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 25 Feb. 2017,

www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/25/mohsin-hamid-danger-nostalgia-brighter-

future. Accessed 2 Nov. 2020.