Thinking of memory and postmemory narratives in vulnerable times

This paper engages with current psychological and social articulations of trans-generational trauma as experienced by both the “second” and the “third” (post-war) generation. At this point, an increasing historical remove contributes to levelling poignant and incontrovertible differences between perpetrator and victim experiences of the legacy of National Socialism. Marianne Hirsch’s seminal conceptualization of transgenerational memory as “postmemory,” for instance, applies to the formation and contradictions of an inherited memory for children and grandchildren of both victims and perpetrators. Yet, I argue, we need to understand the interdependence and terms of these ‘memory symptoms,’ along with the seeming proximity of such disparate subject- positions as part of a far-reaching historical legacy without dissolving them into a convenient and potentially apologetic history of German suffering. The central question posed by the legacy of Auschwitz may be condensed to: Is it possible to express an engagement with that catastrophic legacy without repressing, denying, or nostalgically rewriting painful memories on the one hand, or circumventing complicity by assuming an undifferentiated position of ‘victim of history,’ on the other hand? This question is particularly poignant in light of the fact that such strategies were often employed to articulate war and postwar memories of the first generation tainted by affect and guilt, and as such passed on to the second and third generation. Taking my cue from recent literary studies that have underscored the ability of literature and cinema to express concealed, repressed, or uncomfortable truths about the past, I focus on the aesthetic representation of history as part of what Amir Eshel has called “the poetics of loss.” In fact, I share and want to build on Eshel’s premise that works of literature do not set out to “master” the past but instead present “imaginative redescriptions” (as used by Rorty) , new vocabularies with which to grasp the contradictions and impasses of history. Understood as such “imaginative redescriptions,” the aesthetic representations of history under consideration here no longer allow the question of a ‘proper or improper’ engagement of history and instead their analysis is driven by the desire to understand rather than to know. In a way, these memory texts dramatize history as a Schlüsselszene, as fiction sustained by what Benjamin has called mémoire involontaire, a memory fed by images, “which we never saw until we remembered.” With this premise, I propose to analyze narrative strategies as employed in recent tetxts by Hans-Ulrich Treichel (Der Verlorene) and Katharina Hacker (Eine Art Liebe) as attempts to stage what may be termed a perspective of ‚trans-generational difference’ with respect to the psychological, social and socio-economic effects of war.

Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso , 2024

Michelle Maiese: Trauma, dissociation, and relational authenticity Caroline Christoff: Performative trauma narratives: Imperfect memories and epistemic harms Aisha Qadoos: Ambiguous loss: A loved one's trauma Alberto Guerrero Velazquez: El trauma está en la respuesta. Hacia una visión post-causal en la definición de trauma psicológico Clarita Bonamino, Sophie Boudrias, and Melanie Rosen: Dreams, trauma, and prediction errors Gabriel Corda: Memoria episódica y trastorno de estrés postraumático en animales no humanos: una propuesta metodológica María López Ríos, Christopher Jude McCarroll, and Paloma Muñoz Gómez: Memory, mourning, and the Chilean constitution Sergio Daniel Rojas-Sierra, and Tito Hernando Pérez Pérez: Subjetividades rememorantes, marcas narrativas y trauma cultural en la construcción de memoria de desmovilizados de las FARC-EP en el AETCR Pondores Germán Bonanni: Y después de la guerra... ¿Qué?

Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies, 2019

Interest in trauma has increased substantially since PTSD was included in the American Psychological Association's diagnostic manual in 1980, partly as a result of years of work from US veterans' associations (Whitehead 2004: 4). Trauma theory, especially literary trauma theory, can be traced to the Yale school and the landmark volume Trauma: Explorations in Memory (1995) edited by Cathy Caruth, though later scholars have been sceptical about Caruth's particular reading of psychoanalysis (Leys 2000) and the Eurocentric focus of much early trauma theory. In terms of literary theory, the editors of the present volume note parallels between postmodern scepticism as regards grand narratives and the stylistic and rhetorical experimentation frequently found in both postmodern and trauma literature. It borrows theoretical frameworks from the likes of Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, and Caruth, in addition to cultural studies and theories of affect-according to the back cover description. With some justification, much is also made of the interdisciplinarity of the collection. Caruth and the "school of Deconstructive Trauma Studies" (2), however, do come in for some criticism in the introduction, with suggestions that Caruth's focus on the "unrepresentable" and "unspeakable" (3) seems to lack a basis for political action and risks placing a block against the potential of narrative for healing trauma, as suggested by some psychotherapists (2-3). The introduction also echoes Dominick LaCapra's warning against conflating "generalised

2015

Corpus mundi, №1(4), 2020

Thee method of "oral history" is quite widely used today, despite the fact that it came into being not so long ago. Thee origins of the method of oral history should be sought for in the studies related to interviewing, and with reference to related disciplines, i.e. sociology, ethnology, political science and, partly, linguistics. Quiite soon, the disputes over the relation of oral history and historical memory became common for critical literature. Thee interview method is a very complex way, which requires quite an effoort, as well as the awareness of researcher's subjectivity of a high degree, therefore, some historians sees oral history as a highly unreliable source. Yet, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the method of oral history is in high demand in cases of no other sources except for the evidence of human memory being left.. Oral history enables us to study not so much the facts of the past as the very human consciousness and its alteration, transformation, enables us to pose a question on the memory practices from a new perspective. Memory and remembering practices are closely related to oblivion, which, in its turn, indicates the need to eliminate the information that ravages the human psyche and the structure of public consciousness. Oblivion could be entitled "memory trauma" which should be understood as the events, destructive both to personal and social (including national) identity. Consequently the memory starts to be associated with the concept of trauma. Thee article delves into the relation between oral history and human memory, the problem of "accessing" the traumatic experience, special aspects of narrative in the traumatic experience.

Oñati Socio-legal Series, 2020

Is there a relationship between story-telling and memorialisation in the construction of victim identities? This paper seeks to examine these questions and shed light on the cultural dynamics of victimisation with reference to examples from sociological theories of late modernity and empirical research with people who self-identify as victims. Using examples from recent biographic interviews with an asylum seeker fleeing conflict in Gaza and two Hungarian radical right activists, the argument will be that victim identities are constructed and reconstructed through the development of personal and mediatised narratives about suffering and resilience. ¿Existe alguna relación entre la narración y la memoria en la construcción de las identidades de víctima? Este artículo pretende analizar esas cuestiones y arrojar luz sobre las dinámicas culturales de victimización, haciendo referencia a ejemplos de teorías sociológicas de la modernidad tardía y a investigaciones empíricas con personas q...

Family stories give the individual a sense of identity and create a story for the inclusion, transmission and attachment of new generations. If we know the past of the family, we can tell the story of how it is. The family features of the past and today are familiar to the individual. New generations depend on the way of movement and discourses of previous generations. While some of these stories are about identity, ethnicity, culture, some are about family history, positive or negative experiences. Traumatic events that family members have witnessed or experienced are transferred to later generations. Traumatically overwhelming, unbearable, unimaginable memories and discourses go beyond social discourse and are passed to the future generations as emotional tenderness or a chaotic urgency. Various theories and methods have been developed to understand and clarify this transmission. Transgenerational transmission studies have come into question with Holocaust studies, first studies on that topic began with the 2nd and 3rd generations of Holocaust survivors. Theories of trauma transmission point some different approaches of how traumatic events experienced by the family transmitted, they are: transgenerational transmission, inter-generational transmission, multigenerational transmission, cross-generational transmission and parental transmission. In 1990, Marianne Hirsch proposed the concept of post-memory as a transgenerational transmission in a work on formation of collective memory of Holocaust. The concept became a fundamental element of memory work, causing a series of debates. According to the theorists who embraced the post-memory conception, there was a need for a specific conceptualization to study the function of traumatic experience transmission through images and stories, to establish the knowledge of experience of later generations. It thus, made possible, to describe a proximal experience or indirect recall from a transgenerational point of view, in which the subjective relationship with the event is preserved. In the last two decades, post-memory was centered on almost all trauma transmission and cultural studies. Not only the next generation of Holocaust survivors, but also dynamics of other societies who were exposed to societal and historical trauma are covered within this concept. This study handles the transgenerational trauma transmission in post-memory theoretical framework. How transmission occurs, what is transmitted to generations, when transmission took place and how this transmission affects future generations are topics of that study.

Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 2015

In contrast to history, which strives for a neutral and objective stance from which to narrate the past, literature can be thought of as multi-functional when it comes to traumatic history: as healing, in that it restores meaning where it has been destroyed; as subversive, in that it tells counter-histories of the master-narrative; as complementary, in that it integrates suppressed voices and painful experiences into the collective memory; or as disturbing, in that it narrates trauma as a persisting condition that continues into the present. This article looks into literary representations of trauma that make use of different narrative modes to reconstruct the past and to deal with collective trauma in 20th-century China. In order to understand the relationship between historical trauma and collective memory and to demonstrate the way in which memory relates to the past and to what extent memory shapes the collective identity of the present, the paper utilizes the concepts of commun...

Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing , 2022

By dealing with various traumatic events, this volume shows the impact of trauma on the victims’ memory and identity on both individual and collective levels. Bringing together scholars from varying social, cultural, ethnic and political backgrounds, it foregrounds the suffering of the marginalised, thus giving them a narrative, a voice. The book shows the way in which the victims of trauma confront the past, instead of running away from it, share their stories with others, and thus (re)assert their shattered identity. It also highlights the way in which (trauma) narratives can enable the traumatised to challenge official history and to come up with an alternative version of it. Put another way, trauma narratives provide the victims and survivors the opportunity to reimagine, to reinvent and to rewrite the past in order to secure a peaceful future, and help them find a place in history.

This investigation examines the notion of psychic trauma as it has worked through professional discourses in psychoanalysis, psychology and psychiatry and entered broader public discourses in contemporary cultures to become the emblematic condition of our age, which we may discern as the age of trauma. Badiou's philosophy of the event provides a stark contrast and precise counterweight for trauma theory. The basic premise of the investigation is that while the event opens possibilities, trauma closes them. As therapeutic discourses and scientific research have become polarized around shifting dichotomous discourses about trauma, cutting across all theories and cultures throughout the last century, we turn to philosophy, its methods and tools to redefine the aporias of trauma and event.