Both nostalgia and melancholia have been portrayed as psychological inabilities orrefusals to mourn, coming to denote a common failure to having adapted tosituations of social and political change. Both concepts have been used to eithercondemn the conditions they diagnose, or, alternatively, to hail them for theiremancipatory potential. In this regard, both nostalgia and melancholia have beenused effectively, separately and alongside one another, as instruments for politicalcritique. However, with this mutual opposition to mourning, melancholia andnostalgia have also been used in ways that make them almost interchangeable. Inthe absence of a detailed and direct comparison of these two concepts, this articleexplores the differences and overlaps between melancholia and nostalgia, as well asthe different kinds of analyses of posttransition societies they enable. This isachieved through the juxtaposition of a particular regularity in post-apartheid SouthAfrican popular culture, Afrikaner self-parody, which is characterized as melancholic, with what has frequently been called Ostalgie, nostalgia for the formerGerman Democratic Republic.