ABSTRACT
Walter Benjamin had first used the concept of 'left-wing melancholy' in the early 1930s to criticise those for whom memories of old causes were more powerful sources of attachment than the prospect of working for present political change. Karl Marx's essay on the 'Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte' helped to establish the orthodox idea among the left that the past was an obstacle that had to be overcome. Similarly, Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge regarded collective memory of past political struggles, resistance and organisation as a precondition for the practice of counter-hegemonic politics. The claim that contemporary culture was dominated by the "nostalgia mode" was an important element of Frederic Jameson's argument that postmodern society 'has become incapable of dealing with time and history'. History as a mode of knowledge is incapable of providing a neutral or agreed-upon platform for justice because its method will always be ideologically weighted in favour of those political interests that possess and control archives.
