Initially comprehended as a spatial longing, the understanding of nostalgia soon expanded from homesickness into temporal longing. Even if undoubtedly extant from the earliest times, described in poems and novels, nostalgia emerged as a field of interest to scholars only in the seventeenth century. Originally, it was considered to be a medical condition, with possibly fatal consequences; later, with the advent of Romanticism, it became one of the human conditions for humanities and social sciences to explore. Ever since, nostalgia has been continuously perceived as a phenomenon on the rise, appearing due to the uncertainties of (post-)modernity and the impossibility of establishing continuity or an imaginable future. It is depicted as a lingering bittersweet emotion which awakens our senses, like the Proustian Madeleine, brings our memories to the fore, and instigates narratives and discussions about the past, the present, and the future, yet incapacitates us for imaginative action. In media and public discourse, it is either commercialized or considered a negative phenomenon of regressive political and social forces. In the political field, it has been assigned most often to the Other; in political terms, to far-right voters rather than far-left, and to populist propaganda; and in identitarian terms, to the postsocialist subject, Homo (post)Sovieticus. However, recent research in psychology has established nostalgia as a positive phenomenon, improving sociability and lowering stress. In parallel, while it remains elusive and diversely defined, a number of scholars in social sciences and humanities have identified it as a subversive phenomenon with a potential to inspire progressive narratives, through a fierce critique of the present and a turn toward the future, with potentially impactful action.