Collective Trauma

Purpose-The murders of Black people at the hands of police in 2020 have led to global protests that have called on public officials to defund or abolish the police. What has been drowned out in these conversations, however, is the traumatizing aftereffects of anti-Black police violence as a public health crisis. In this paper, I argue that the racial terrorism of anti-Black police violence is a deeply felt wound in Black communities that extends beyond the individuals who directly experience it and that this type of collective trauma must be understood as an urgent public health crisis. Design/methodology/approach-Using published studies and online commentaries on anti-Black police violence and its mental health impacts in Canada and the United States, this paper examines the mental health impacts of anti-Black police violence at both the individual and community levels. Findings-A public health response to the traumatizing aftereffects of anti-Black police violence and other forms of state violence must highlight important policy imperatives, such as policies of action focused on improving the public health system. It must also encompass a recognition that the public health crisis of anti-Black police violence is not solvable solely by public health agencies alone. Rather, strategic opportunities to address this crisis arise at every level of governmental interaction, including law enforcement, health care, employment, business, education and the media. Originality/value-While the impact of anti-Black police violence on the mental health of Black individuals has been emerging in the literature over the last several years, what has been less focused on and what I address in this paper is how the threat of that violence lingers in Black communities long after the protestors have packed up their megaphones, resulting in collective trauma in Black communities.

The purpose of the study is to identify the effects of manipulation on students' memories of socially significant events. The article contains theoretical substantiation of the problem of collective memory that serves the current interests of certain social groups. The effects of mnemonic convergence in the process of social interaction are described. A pilot study was conducted in two experimental samples and a control group involved 123 participants. Students wrote a free narrative memory about their own experiences of quarantine caused by the spread of coronavirus in Ukraine during March-May 2020. While processing the data of the written assignments, the meaningful aspects were recorded, which corresponded to the nature of the intervention. The results showed that memories of the past and perceptions of the future in experimental groups corresponded to previous manipulative impacts. The analysis of the current situation was determined not by the emotional evaluation of the situation, but rather by the general attitude regarding its significance. The findings of the study explain the impact of perceptions of the past on the interpretation of the future. It is proved that the manipulative influence on the memory of socially significant events has a reliable effect on individual diversity of memories, reducing them to a template provided from outside. The perspective of future studies concerning the impact of group cohesion on the social mediation of mnemonic processes is outlined.

Incidents that have a fatal impact on civilians have historically had a long-lasting impact on the psyche of those who witnessed it. The politicized September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States has been the most significant historical event of the 21st century, with major global consequences. The ongoing threats of terrorism the 9/11 incidents initiated have transformed public attitudes, socially and politically, and impacted the way people have related to one another both within the United States and globally. This paper critically examines the (i) enduring lessons learned 20 years after the tragic incidents of 9/11; (ii) global psychological response to 9/11 from a cultural-historical perspective; (iii) the broader social and socio-political impacts; interplay between identity politics, national security concerns and risks, prejudice, exclusion, and religious intolerance the events have triggered within the United States and globally; and how social media, fast information, and fake news have influenced critical thinking globally. The paper particularly explores how 9/11 could potentially impact an individual's propensity for religious fundamentalism and prejudice and intolerance towards those who are unfamiliar.

а Виктория Мусвик Фотография как теория и теория фотографии в России 2000х: возвращение рефлексии. опубл. в сб. "Пути России. Новые языки социального описания", Москва: НЛО, 2014, С. 461-477 (страницы в тексте) На протяжении XX в мировой теории фотографии неоднократно ставился вопрос об особенностях этой художественной и регистрационной практики (медиума 1 ), делающих ее формой «визуальной критической теории» -возникшим одновременно с эпохой модерности (modernity) способом рефлексии над настоящим. В CCCP к середине прошлого века в связи с особенностями идеологической политики в области искусства и культуры произошел подрыв основ данного вида рефлексии, что оказало особенно сильное влияние на фотографию -в силу особенностей устройства «фотографического».

"אי אבדה הדרך הברוכה /
אי אבדה הדרך אל הכפר /
הדרך בה רציתי לשוב בחזרה"
(יורם טהרלב)
"Where is the lost blessed road /
Where is the road to the village  /
The road of my return"
(Yoram Teharlev)

In 2007, an Israeli prime-time musical TV show presented a Palestinian singer performing an all-israeli song expressing a yearning for a lost village and a wish to return home. Sharp-sighted viewers recognized how this reframing had exposed a highly explosive political content, that was in fact there all along. The political provocation seemed unintended, and was later covered up by the producers.
Why and how is it that when trying to take the main road, we find ourselves returning again and again to roads we had tried to avoid? This is the case with the issue located at the center of this paper: Despite the efforts of silencing the traces of the Palestinian Nakba out of our conscious collective memory, the Israeli public sphere is in fact saturated with signs of this traumatic event. The repressed is doomed to return.
The paper suggest an inovative use of psychoanalytic concepts in order to understand this silencing as a process of social repressing. it will be suggested that in regards to the Nakba, perpetrators' trauma can be recognized alongside the primary Palestinian trauma – a conceptualization that helps to understand the bases of such repression process .In contrast to a "chosen trauma", perpetrators' trauma is usually a denied collective trauma, sizzling in the social unconscious and tied to a repressed guilt.
Several such "traumatic social symptoms" will be introduced in the paper, based on fascinating examples from the Israeli culture – both the material culture and the symbolic culture. Other source of examples stems from the author's experience as the facilitator of a unique study-and-reflection group, in which the Jewish-Isreali participants had faced this uncanny materials and tried to work through them together.

טראומה היא אירוע מכונן בחייו של אדם. פרויד, ובעקבותיו חוקרים מובילים, טוענים כי אפשר להתייחס לטראומה ברמת הקבוצה כמו לטראומה ברמת הפרט. במאמר זה אני מבקר גישה זו בהתייחסי למאפיינים שונים בחוויה הטראומטית. אני מציע כאן מודל של טראומה הפועלת כמעין חור שחור בספֵרה הציבורית ומעוותת את החלל–זמן. הסובייקט הפוסט–טראומטי, כך אני מבקש להראות, משמש סוכן טראומה: גופו מנכיח באופן אלים את הממשי בתוך הסדר הסמלי ומעצב מחדש את הסדר הסמלי, ועם זאת, על מנת להיות מסוגלים לעבור מטראומה של הפרט לטראומה של הקבוצה, עדיין נדרשת עבודה רבה הן אמפירית והן תאורטית. יש אפוא לענות על השאלה הבאה: איך טראומה במישור האישי הופכת להיות טראומה במישור הלאומי. בשלב זה לא ברור על אילו יסודות עומד רעיון הטראומה במישור הלאומי או רעיון הזיכרון הקולקטיבי, אך אין ספק שהן פרויד והן לאקאן, כל אחד בדרכו, מסייעים לנו להבין טוב יותר כיצד חורגת טראומה אישית מהפרט ועוברת לרמת הקבוצה. במובן זה הדיון בפרויד ובלאקאן אינו עקר אלא מפרה, ופותח לפנינו שער שדרכו אפשר להתחיל לחשוף את היסודות הטראומטיים של החברה.

This doctoral thesis takes the form of a social therapeutic session, that deals with a problem ailing Mexican identities. Drawing on multiple academic and therapeutic resources, it creates a template for healing social identities through individual processes of healing, including the author’s. Using this template, the presence of shame in its social identities is explored as a problem for Mexico, and a dominant set of Mexican identities is distinguished.
At the outset of this research/healing project, four identity workshops were carried out. The participants were a group of members of the Zapotec communities of Pueblos Mancomunados de la Sierra Norte de Oaxaca, and a group of therapists who are either Mexican nationals or residents. The intent of the workshops was to provide a space for the creation of a different set of Mexican identities, which would arise out of both groups sharing with each other stories experienced or witnessed with respect to discrimination, and the resources needed to overcome it. The results were a series of stories and conversations that left participants moved and in many cases healed, in individual terms, in relation to their identities as members of Mexican society.
The thesis/therapeutic session is not a linear account of this process; it is a new process in itself. It incorporates the learning that was generated through the workshops into the creation of a written healing space. The elements that made healing possible are recreated for the reader, accompanied by information and discussions on the intellectual and academic foundations of the project. Knowledge from the fields of Social Fuzziology, Action Research, Narrative Therapy, Ethnography and Critical Discourse Analysis is brought together to create the tools for analysing the rich texts constituting the data. The wisdom and courage of the participants is revealed in the discussions of the material, and the resources that made them possible are distinguished, honoured and offered to the reader. This constitutes an invitation to contribute to the extension of the healing process, beyond the necessarily limited scope of this academic project.

Resumen: En los últimos decenios, el debate acerca de las relaciones entre la historiografía y la memoria histórica – como dos formas totalmente diferentes de acceder al pasado por parte de un grupo humano – es cada vez más candente. Esta discusión ha encontrado su piedra de toque en el análisis de aquellos acontecimientos-límite del pasado siglo, que transgreden los marcos tradicionales de recepción histórica. En el presente artículo trato de plantear cómo el estudio del historiador Dominick LaCapra acerca de la recepción del Holocausto plantea una particular conexión entre las categorías que tratamos: la historia y la memoria.
Palabras clave: Dominick LaCapra, holocausto, trauma, elaboración, compulsión a la repetición.
Abstract: In the last decades, the debate about the relation between history and historical memory – as two different ways of accessing the past – has become more relevant. The discussion has found its touchtone in the analysis of those events of the last century which violate the traditional frames of historical reflection. In the present essay I try to study how the works of Dominick LaCapra about the reception of the holocaust defend a particular conexion between the categories we have dealt with: history and memory.
Keywords: Dominick LaCapra, holocaust, trauma, elaboration,
acting

Abstract: Could a cultural memory and identity constructed around traumatic events in the historical past interpreted as the result of pollution of the sacred center give a group an evolutionary advantage under the right conditions? The paper below assesses this question by examining three different waves of religious entrepreneurship that drove the evolution of the ancient Israelite religion between the late eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Bringing Jeffrey Alexander’s cultural sociology, specifically his theory of trauma and of pollution-purification rituals, into dialogue with evolutionary sociology, a robust theory of religious evolution is offered. Typical explanations focus on the evolution of monotheism or on the portability of the texts, whereas this essay argues that it was (1) the specific historical and sociocultural conditions that (2) shaped the specific content of the texts and (3) the criteria employed in selecting some traditions and not others. Of equal importance, (4) normative innovations related to interpreting and editing the texts that paradoxically made the word of god fixed and rigid, yet malleable across a wide swath of milieus and (5) annual, weekly, and daily rituals meant to inscribe the pollution-purification narrative contributed to the adaptive success of the Israelite cultural assemblage over the course of two millennia.

This chapter aims to focus on three key moments in the history of viral dances: the Saint Vitus’ dancing plagues in 16th Century France, 1990’s HIV+ performers dancing, and TikTok viral dances during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Each of these moments has produced new discourses on contagion and movement and shows the importance of reading dance through medical humanities.

in Revisiting HIV/AIDS in French Culture. Edited by Loic Bourdeau and V. Hunter Capps. Lexington Books, 2022.

Magical realism is highly appropriate for portraying collective trauma and also for healing historical wounds. This is due to the fact that by means of the magical element, the painful, silenced or distorted memories of past traumas can be efficiently reconstructed, shared and transmitted by integrating them into both individual and collective memory. This is also the aim of Hwang Sok-yong in
The Guest. In addition, Hwang employs the narrative mode to portray several opposing voices throughout the text without granting superiority to any of them.
As trauma by definition cannot be simply verbalized, the magical element is used in the novel to represent the unspeakable. The ghosts are metaphors of the collective trauma of the massacre in Hwanghae province, and in a broader sense also represent the unacceptable reality of division. Through evoking these ghosts, the characters face their own repressed past and cleanse themselves from the feelings of anger and guilt through sharing their memories and listening to the testimonies of the dead. Thus, the aim of the shamanic ritual employed in The Guest is to reestablish the sense of community ruptured by the original traumatic
event and aggravated by the distorted official narratives of both sides.

Since the 1990‘s Lithuanian society undergoes a devastating epidemiological situation of suicide. Lithuania has been the leader of suicide in the World since 1996. Before the Second World War the majority of our population was living in a traditional rural agricultural economy. This traditional way of life was slowly
eroded during the Soviet era and was drastically altered by the economic changes of the 90's. Many works in the domain of psychology were conducted to examine the connection between various psychological constructs (hopelessness, economic
crisis, and so forth) and suicide, but little care has been yielded to the anthropological context of suicide: socioeconomic changes, archaic concepts of suicide and ethnomedical ways of coping with stressful and traumatic experiences. Unfortunately, no anthropological methodology exists in Lithuania to research the
current ethnographic narrative of stress, trauma and fright illness. The report is an attempt to comment leading Lithuanian sociological theory of cultural suicide factors and to promote further inquiry in the area.

In this paper an interpretation regarding the relations between
collective memory and the writing of history along the XXth will
be developed. Far from assuming an historical gap within those
two ways of relating and depicting the past, or from denying any
different between them, the nature of XXth historical
experiences compels us to highlight their tensions and
convergences. By assuming that some historical events had been
plotted as collective traumas, it will be necessary to discuss how
the disruption of temporality that the notion of trauma grasp,
allow us to re

This article presents an analysis of the mural titled Memoria Visual de una Nación (Visual
Memory of a Nation) with a focus on its panel Los Conflictos (The Conflicts) , by renowned
Chilean artist Mario Toral. The representation of divisive events in MVN raises the following
questions: Why did Toral include conflictive issues in a mural representing national identity
and memory? And, how did Toral deal with national identity and its demand for unity when
faced with a divisive and traumatic history? The article deals first with the interconnectedness
of meaning-making and social and political context and then addresses the tension
between the realm of the political -or antagonism- and the realm of hegemonic politics -or
order- in search of a deeper understanding of this work of art and its representation of
Chilean history and identity.
Link to the article: http://druzboslovne-razprave.org/clanek/2015/79/1/

En las siguientes páginas realizaré un análisis sobre las condiciones de la aplicación del concepto de trauma a la evolución de los grupos humanos. Emprenderé una lectura crítica de las teorías contemporáneas del trauma colectivo de Cathy Caruth, Frank Ankersmitt, Wulf Kansteiner y Dominick Lacrapa para dar cuenta de los límites del trasvase de esta categoría del ámbito clínico al social. Surgirán, consecuentemente, tanto problemas epistémicos como ético-políticos. Estos últimos serán especialmente reseñados en la medida en que su estudio crítico nos permite explicar y deslegitimar los usos y abusos políticos del contenido simbólico derivado de las experiencias traumáticas.

The study focuses on the relationship between minority literature and collective trauma. Drawing on the theory of trauma, psychoanalysis, memory studies, and literary representations of memory, we argue that the trauma resulting from the suppression of Slovene identity in Trieste during fascism is transmitted into literary discourse through two channels. Firstly, through the normative model of remembering the trauma in questionnamely through literary works that can be described as fictions of memory. Secondly, we paid attention to the manifestations of trauma that (unconsciously) enter the narrative structure, regardless of the time and events, which are not necessarily tied to the period of fascism and to concrete events and places of memory. In this context, we illuminated the literary characters from the perspective of literary imagology (the I and the Other).

The aim of this article is to address to what extent some institutional form of remembering the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) as a collective trauma could be considered an instance of Jeffrey Alexander and Neil Smelzer´s notion of ’cultural trauma‘. Or to put it in other words, in which sense the notion of cultural trauma may cast a new light on one of the different ways in which the Spanish Civil War was remembered and retold during the transition to democracy (1977-83). Spanish society remembered the war as a collective trauma, so painful that it encouraged society to promote a ‘pact of oblivion’ toward victims of Francoist repression. According to this traumatic memory, the Spanish Civil War was a ‘fratricidal struggle’, whose outbreak was a consequence of the tensions that underlie Spanish history. It led to the blurring of distinctions between victims and culprits because both sides were considered equally responsible. Therefore, everyone could claim the ownership of suffering. However, this representation did not fit in with the historical records; it was a consequence of the social influence of some ‘memory makers’ that developed new narratives and re-defined the ownership of suffering. Because of this divergence between the historical record of the war and society’s traumatic memory of it during the transition to democracy, I would like to analyse the possibility of studying the nature of the latter by means of the concept of cultural trauma. After all, Alexander´s critique of psychoanalytical insight into collective trauma could be useful when analysing traumatic historical experiences where it is not clear whether the traumatic nature of those memories come from the events themselves or from the cultural frames that attributed significance to those events.

Keywords: Spanish Civil War; cultural trauma; violence; responsibility; victimhood; perpetrators; the war of madness.

Reflecting on the concept of collective trauma for understanding protracted violent conflicts
Taking up some of the resistance against the term of collective trauma, Cordula Reimann & Ursula König discuss why collective and transgenerational trauma are relevant and should be a key concept for development and peacebuilding/conflict transformation practitioners and practices.

Since 9/11 at the latest, the idea that entire collectives or societies can be traumatized by shattering historical events has witnessed a significant upsurge. Theoretical concepts of collective or societal trauma are surprisingly scarce though. Notable exceptions are Volkan's mass psychological concept of 'chosen trauma' and Alexander's rather sociological notion of 'cultural trauma'. But while Alexander's focus on the social construction of trauma narratives is blind to the real suffering of people and its possible societal consequences, Volkan takes human suffering as a starting point but falls prey to the analyzed communities' own 'invention of tradition' (Hobsbawm/Ranger). His blindness towards the constructive character of 'collective traumas' is problematic because the traumarelated concept of victimhood is used by many collectives in order to legitimate political claims or mask their own perpetratorship. In my chapter I want to follow up the question of how it is possible to speak about human suffering after wars, genocides and persecutions while at the same time countering the pervasive ideological trauma and victimhood discourses. With Hans Keilson, Ernst Simmel and psychoanalytic trauma theory I argue that all traumatization processes must be understood in societal context. The psychosocial reality before, during, and after the traumatizing event always shapes the trauma.

Closing a gap in conflict transformation: Understanding collective and transgenerational trauma 2 Contacts Dr. Cordula Reimann works as mediator, facilitator, trainer, consultant, and lecturer in the areas of conflict sensitivity, conflict transformation, gender and trauma. Cordula has worked extensively in South Asia and the Middle East. Cordula founded the consultancy and training firm "core. consultancy and training in conflict transformation" and the coaching business "core change coaching".

Incidents that have a fatal impact on civilians have historically had a long-lasting impact on the psyche of those who witnessed it. The politicized September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States has been the most significant historical event of the 21st century, with major global consequences. The ongoing threats of terrorism the 9/11 incidents initiated have transformed public attitudes, socially and politically, and impacted the way people have related to one another both within the United States and globally. This paper critically examines the (i) enduring lessons learned 20 years after the tragic incidents of 9/11; (ii) global psychological response to 9/11 from a cultural-historical perspective; (iii) the broader social and socio-political impacts; interplay between identity politics, national security concerns and risks, prejudice, exclusion, and religious intolerance the events have triggered within the United States and globally; and how social media, fast infor...

For English below
-----------------------------
Авторът въвежда понятието “историческа травма” в полето на социалните науки в България. Текстът представя основните характеристики на концепцията, изследванията по няколко случая, някои отворени въпроси за теоретичните основания и методологията на изследване, както и нейните възможни терапевтични, социални и политически приложения. Статията допринася за разбирането на взаимовръзката между политика, история и психология, както и на психологическите измерения на историческите процеси.

Ключови думи: историческа травма, отговор на историческа травма, колективна травма, неотработена мъка, трансгенерационна травма, психология на мира
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The author introduces the concept of "historical trauma" in the field of social sciences in Bulgaria. The text presents the main characteristics of the concept, several case studies, some open questions about the theoretical foundations and research methodology, as well as possible therapeutic, social and political applications. The paper contributes to the understanding of relationships among politics, history and psychology, as well as the psychological dimensions of historical processes.

Keywords: historical trauma, historical trauma response, collective trauma, unresolved grief, transgenerational trauma, peace psychology

Here I present a variety of new plays from contemporary Turkey dealing with the ongoing civil war from a variety of sides. Through the characters presented in these plays,  it is possible to see a nuanced reflection of an on-going civil war, and its long term affects in society. The most important potential these plays provide is making this neutralized state of mind that is distorted by this collective trauma visible; therefore questionable and potentially changeable. Reminding the potentiality of change through making the unnaturalness of the current situation visible is the most important long-term political goal of these plays.

Nicht zufällig kennzeichnet viele der neuen widerständigen Bewegungen, dass sie mit dem ausdrücklichen Formulieren der eigenen Angst beginnen 1 und so das Tabu der "Angst vor der Angst" durchbrechen. Das kann eine haltbare Grundlage sein, statt abstrakter Interessen die wirklichen Bedürfnisse in den Mittelpunkt zu stellen.

Elsa Fernandez hat mit "Fragmente über das Überleben" ein Buch aus romani Perspektive geschrieben. In diesem thematisiert sie die Gewalt der Unsichtbarmachung von romani Geschichte/n, den anhaltenden Gadje-Rassismus-also Rassismus, der von nicht-romani Personen ausgeht-und das Fehlen menschlicher Beziehungen in der postgenozidalen und postfaschistischen Gesellschaft. Dabei bringt sie die Stimmen und Werke von romani und anderen Autor*innen und Theoretiker*innen of Color in einen Austausch über die Möglichkeiten der Heilung durch menschliche Beziehungen. Aus einer Schwarzen geschwisterlichen Perspektive gehe ich mit Elsa ins Gespräch. Liebe Elsa, du deckst viele Wissenslücken auf zu Pharrajmos-eine romani Bezeichnung des Genozids an romani Menschen in Europa zwischen 1933 und 1945-, Romani-Verfolgung in Europa, Gadje-Rassismus, der institutionalisiert und kultiviert wird, aber auch zu selbstbestimmten romani Geschichten. Dein Ziel ist eine würdevolle Geschichtsschreibung, die auf alltäglichem Forschen beruht, das du u. a. als die Arbeit einer Detektivin beschreibst. Wie sah dies in Bezug auf das Buch aus? Die detektivische Arbeit bestand aus vielen Aspekten. Ich musste Spuren aufsuchen-romani Gedanken, Worte, Töne, Schriften-, die von Weißen verdeckt und verstummt worden sind. Wenn du nach historischen Fakten über romani Sachen suchst, musst du mindestens drei Mal prüfen und vergleichen, ob das, was von Gadje gesagt und geschrieben wurde, wirklich stimmen kann. Die Forschung und der Diskurs über die romani Geschichte-egal, ob über Kunst, präzise Aspekte des Pharrajmos oder Traumata-sind voller epistemologischer und faktischer Irrtürmer und voller Gewalt, da die Autor*innen fast nie reflektieren, dass ihre Annahmen oder Fragestellungen gadje sind. Dann müssen w…

Collective traumas may often lead to deep societal divides and internal conflicts. In this article, we propose that conspiracy theories
emerging in response to victimizing events may play a key role in the breakdown of social cohesion. We performed a nationally
representative survey in Poland (N = 965) two years after the Smoleńsk airplane crash in which the Polish president was killed, together
with 95 political officials and high-ranking military officers. The survey found that people endorsing conspiratorial accounts of the Smoleńsk
catastrophe preferred to distance themselves from conspiracy non-believers, while skeptics preferred greater distance to conspiracy
believers. We also examined the role of people’s belief in the uniqueness of in-group historical suffering as an important antecedent of both
conspiracy thinking and hostility towards outgroups (conspiracy believers and non-believers).

In this paper, I discuss the idea of psychoanalysis as a successful healing process from the standpoint of a broader understanding of the politics of care for the other. On this basis, and following Maria Acosta’s concept of “grammars of listening,” I propose psychoanalysis as a political project for overcoming trauma in both individual and collective history in such a way that it can also be considered in political terms.

The paper, based on the data of a qualitative sociological research, reveals the basic social characteristics of family memory of the peasant’s expropriation and political reprisals of the first half of the XX century among social groups on the territory of Mordovia. The major factors influencing the formation and translation of the family memory are studied. The assessment of the conflict potential of collective memory of reprisals is provided.

Twentieth century has witnessed several cases of mass traumatization when groups as wholes were ostracized even threated with annihilation. From the perspectives of identity trauma, when harms are afflicted to a group of people by other groups because of their categorical membership, ethnic and national traumas stand out. This paper aims to investigate long-term consequences of permanent traumatization on national identity with presenting a narrative social psychological study as a potential way of empirical exploration of the processes of collective traumatization and trauma elaboration. A Narrative Trauma Elaboration Model has been introduced which identifies linguistic markers of the elaboration process. Newspaper articles (word count = 203172) about a significant national trauma of the Hungarian history, Treaty of Trianon (1920), were chosen from a ninety year time span and emotional expressions of narratives were analysed with a narrative categorical content analytic tool (NarrCat). Longitudinal pattern of data show very weak emotional processing of the traumatic event. Results are discussed in terms of collective victimhood as core element of national identity and its effects on trauma elaboration.

The present paper focuses on some of the tensions that have been recurrent in the concept of psychic trauma since the late nineteenth century. It further argues that these tensions have been introduced into the concepts of collective trauma and cultural trauma, but have remained undertheorized. These theories have not been able to understand the relationship established between the structural forms of damage and its eventual forms. We therefore draw on some critiques of these concepts to point out the impasses of cultural trauma theories in understanding the dialectic between the general and the particular that is at play in socially mediated psychic suffering. We propose that in order to bring this understanding to fruition, it is necessary to look back to the tradition of critical theory and its concept of suffering, and take up its normative character through a theory of harm based on the concept of negativity.


Resumen: El presente artículo se centra en algunas de las tensiones que han sido recurrentes en el concepto de trauma psíquico desde finales del siglo xix. Además, se plantea que esas tensiones se han introducido en el concepto de trauma colectivo y de trauma cultural, pero han permanecido insuficientemente teorizadas. Estas teorías no han sido capaces de entender la relación que se establece entre las formas estructurales de daño y sus formas puntuales. Por ello, se recurre a algunas críticas de estos conceptos para señalar los impasses de las teorías del trauma cultural para comprender la dialéctica entre lo general y lo particular que está en juego en el sufrimiento psíquico socialmente mediado. Proponemos que para llevar esta comprensión a cabo, es preciso volver a mirar a la tradición de la teoría crítica y su concepto de sufrimiento, así como retomar su carácter normativo en una teoría del daño basada en el concepto de negatividad.

In this article, we draw on feminist trauma studies with the aim of deconstructing the theoretical and methodological binary between individual and collective trauma. Based on first-hand interviews with Bosnian survivors of rape, we attempt to ‘think against’ the private/public split that trauma studies work often unintentionally reifies. We draw upon recent methodological innovations that have been influenced by thinkers such as Derrida and Deleuze. Specifically, we work with what Jackson and Mazzei call rhizomatic and trace readings in the threshold. Through a rhizomatic and trace reading of narrative pieces extracted from the interviews, we engage with the following questions: 1) How do we theorise what Davoine and Gaudilliere call ‘the sociopolitical faultlines’ between collective/public accounts of trauma and those traditionally constructed as private/personal? 2) How do accounts of war rape, which narrate the eruption of the past into the present, elucidate the myriad links between the private and public in a number of ways; among others, the echoes or traces of the everyday ‘before’ in subjects’ stories of the monstrous ‘after’? And 3) What is the relationship between the ‘unspeakable’ in the traumatic memories of the survivors and the ‘speakable’ collective memories of traumatic humanmade events? How does the collective desire ‘not to know’ or ‘to forget’ impact on the individual survivor’s ability to reconstitute their post-trauma identity in a personal as well as a social context? The aim of the analysis is to show that the multifaceted nature of the traumatic reality demands a multifaceted approach that resists binary constructions relating to self/other, private/public, individual/collective.

The paper presents the guidelines for teaching minority literature in the Trieste area, namely at the Slovenian and Italian high schools in Trieste. The teaching method proposed was created as a result of the need for new approaches in teaching literature due to the increasing heterogeneity of the population of high school students. The method takes into account the specific factors characteristic of the Triestine literary system, which affect the production and reception of literature in the Trieste area, that is the turbulent history of this territory during the 20th century and thus also the presence of various traumatic collective memories and postmemories present in this area. Considering these facts, the new teaching method is based on memory studies and literary imagology. In terms of the selection of literary texts it shifts from the nationally prescribed literature curriculum towards regional comparative literature.

Scholarship on Nehruvian non-alignment often assumes an artificial continuity between Jawaharlal Nehru's pre-independence thinking and post-independence decision, as India's prime minister, to pursue a policy of rejecting any international blocs or military alliances. This article demonstrates that, in fact, the ideas that constituted Nehruvian non-alignment were largely absent from Nehru's pre-independence thought – during the decades before India's independence Nehru articulated a strong willingness to cede India's sovereignty to international groupings for idealistic aims. To explain Nehru's shift from idealistic internationalist to professed internationalist but de facto isolationist with regard to alliances and blocs, I advocate a first-image, constructivist approach which considers the impact of collective trauma on Nehru's worldview. Drawing upon a novel, synthesized approach to theorizing collective trauma's impact on national identity, this article argues that the collective trauma Nehru witnessed and experienced during the decades before Indian independence profoundly impacted his trust in international institutions and views on representational diplomacy. In turn, this trauma affected his interpretation of various ideational and strategic considerations, contributing to the formulation of Nehruvian non-alignment.

In order to understand the driving forces behind current developments of globalization and the obviously extreme difficulties of alternative action, I begin by putting the topic into an historical perspective and casting a look particularly at the violent, ongoing, history of modernity as a work society. The perspective will effectively be widened as it is viewed beyond the boundaries of the classical disciplines of historical science, sociology, political economy, etc., even making room for the inclusion of the results of psycho-analytical research. In this way, I attempt to transfer the perspective from a systemic one into an action perspective and to take up the angle of the original victims of the violent historical process. A short explication is given of the relevant aspects of trauma theory. Through this it should become evident that the deep collective traumas resulting from historical violence must have a lasting effect on modern societies, so that modernity can be interpreted as a posttraumatic society. Given this diagnosis, a discussion of the contents and forms of people's struggles against their valorization in this pathological system, of which they are at the same time an integral part are presented.