Editing Kitsch (section)

===Melancholic kitsch vs. nostalgic kitsch===

[[File:Kołobrzeg snow globe.JPG|thumb|right|A souvenir snow globe with an underwater motif]]
In her 1999 book ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience'', cultural historian [[Celeste Olalquiaga]] develops a theory of kitsch that situates its emergence as a specifically nineteenth-century phenomenon, relating it to the feelings of loss elicited by a world transformed by science and industry.<ref>Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience''. Bloomsbury.</ref> Focusing on examples such as [[paperweights]], [[aquariums]], [[mermaid|mermaids]] and [[the Crystal Palace]], Olalquiaga uses Benjamin's concept of the [[Walter Benjamin|"dialectical image"]] to argue for the utopian potential of "melancholic kitsch", which she differentiates from the more commonly discussed "nostalgic kitsch".<ref>Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience''. Bloomsbury. pp. 26, 75</ref>

These two types of kitsch correspond to two different forms of memory. Nostalgic kitsch functions through "reminiscence", which "sacrifices the intensity of experience for a conscious or fabricated sense of continuity":

<blockquote>Incapable of tolerating the intensity of the moment, reminiscence selects and consolidates an event's acceptable parts into a memory perceived as complete. […] This reconstructed experience is frozen as an emblem of itself, becoming a cultural fossil.<ref>Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience''. Bloomsbury. p. 292</ref></blockquote>

In contrast, melancholic kitsch functions through "remembrance", a form of memory that Olalquiaga links to the "[[souvenir]]", which attempts "to repossess the experience of intensity and immediacy through an object".<ref name="auto">Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience''. Bloomsbury. p. 291</ref> While reminiscence translates a remembered event to the realm of the symbolic ("deprived of immediacy in favour of representational meaning"), remembrance is "the memory of the unconscious", which "sacrific[es] the continuity of time for the intensity of the experience".<ref>Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience''. Bloomsbury. p. 294, 292</ref> Far from denying death, melancholic kitsch can only function through a recognition of its multiple "deaths" as a fragmentary remembrance that is subsequently commodified and reproduced. It "glorifies the perishable aspect of events, seeking in their partial and decaying memory the confirmation of its own temporal dislocation".<ref>Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience''. Bloomsbury. p. 298</ref>

Thus, for Olalquiaga, melancholic kitsch is able to function as a Benjaminian dialectical image: "an object whose decayed state exposes and reflects its utopian possibilities, a remnant constantly reliving its own death, a ruin".<ref name="auto"/>