Nostalgia for Futures Past

Abstract This article investigates the intellectual and political legacies of Maoist and other left Third Worldist thought of the 1970s through an analysis of Naeem Mohaiemen’s 2020 film, Afsan’s Long Day, The Young Man Was. The film presents a narrative of the history of the 1970s anti-imperialist left, and in Brechtian fashion, compels the viewer to take an emotionally distanced assessment of the left’s chaotic trajectory through a unique engagement with themes of time, history, and repetition. In the article, I explore several aspects of the film − its relationship to the ‘essay film’ as a genre, the historical context of the global 1970s as depicted in the film, and then conclude with a discussion of the theoretical concept, hauntology, in order to interrogate the political praxis of the film. The 1970s Global left represents a future that never came to be but yet continues to animate contemporary left thought.