Coping with Collective Trauma: Remembrance or Oblivion?
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JUDITH POLLMANNSTUDIUM GENERALE WAGENINGEN, 25
MARCH 2014
Coping with Collective Trauma: Remembrance or
Oblivion?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzfngEzmiSs
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September 1946. Winston Churchill addresses students in Zurich:
The guilty must be punished. Germany must be deprived of the power to rearm and make another aggressive war.
But when all this has been done, as it will be done, as it is being done, there must be an end to retribution. There must be what Mr Gladstone many years ago called 'a blessed act of oblivion'.
We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.
If Europe is to be saved from infinite misery, and indeed from final doom, there must be an act of faith in the European family and an act of oblivion against all the crimes and follies of the past
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Churchill wanted: Instead:
To turn our backs on horrors of the past
Act of faith
Act of oblivion
Forgetting is impossible
And is therefore harmful.
We must remember
What needs to be done after a war?
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As an act of vengeance As a peacekeeping measure
Popular policy instrument in Europe 1400-1850
Amnesty
Settlement of property relations
Agreement to forget events ‘as if they had not occurred’
Oblivion
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Is this possible?
We are wired to forget most of what we do
What we do remember changes over time
Under the influence of those around us.
And remembering is often also done collectively
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But real meaning is another one:
Ross Poole, ‘Enacting oblivion’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 22 (2009) pp. 149-157
‘They do not mean that no one knows about the acts; it is rather that this knowledge is now, not merely of but also in the past; it does not bear on the present. It is history, we might say, not memory’
I.e. we do not act upon our memories.
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Holocaust memorial Berlin Anne Frank (1929-1945)
Remembrance
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Collective commemoration
By storytelling
By creating monuments
Through ceremonies and rituals
Through teaching and schoolbooks
Through songs, films, novels, plays etc
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Kiev, Museum of the Great Patriotic War, 1981
Prague, Monument for the victims of communism, 2002
From victors: To victims:
Development in the 20th centuryFrom victors to victims
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And acknowledging guilt:Memorial for victims of transatlantic slave trade(2012) Nantes,
France
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Interest in trauma
Long term impact of Holocaust experiences
Willingness to engage with this pain among new generations
Explanation for certain types of (collective) behaviour
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Remembering pain: trauma
A form of physical injury
Since Sigmund Freud also: ‘long- term feeling caused by intense events, to which one feels incapable of responding’.
Caused by experiences of personal loss, violence, pain – either man-made or natural
Sigmund Freud (1836-1959)
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Was there trauma before Freud?
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Reasons for silence Reasons to speak
No one to talk to
Shame
Sense of responsibility and guilt
Too painful
New meanings to experiences
Some form of gain, spiritual or material
Early modern evidence:
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Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Term invented about 1980
Used to describe stress caused by traumatic experiences
Loss of sense of identity and control
Experienced by about 9% of victims
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Coping with trauma
Sharing your stories with others
Drawing a line between past and present.
Alone or collectively
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Resilience
Giving it some sort of meaning
E.g. seeing it as an occasion for spiritual growth
Or turn it into an agenda for action
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An altar stone deployed to commemorate hunger during the siege of Leiden
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People in the West today
Focus identity on the self more than on their group
Do not expect trauma
Are less religious
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From individual to collective remembrance
Individual memories
Restoration of ‘normality’ forces oblivion
Rediscovery and thematization of the past
From memory to history
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Can trauma be collective?
Events are not ‘inherently’ traumatic for a group
But they can be remembered as such
Be perceived as an important part of their identity
And transmitted to subsequent generations.
Very much open to manipulation
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Anti-Spanish propaganda in the Netherlands
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What Churchill feared
A repeat of what happened after WWI
Humilitation and reparation demanded from the German losers
Who came to believe they had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by their generals in 1918
And were so willing to follow Hitler in 1933
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Examples of national traumas (according to Wikipedia)
Argentina: Dirty WarCambodia: Cambodian GenocideFrance: Loss of Alsace-LorraineGermany: Treaty of Versailles, defeat in World War II, Berlin WallIraq: 2003 Invasion of IraqIreland: Great FamineIsrael: Holocaust, Assassination of Yitzhak RabinJapan: Black Ships, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and NagasakiNetherlands: The loss of the 1974 FIFA World Cup final against Germany, Norway : 2011 Norway attacksRussia Russo-Japanese War, World War I, Russian Civil War.Spain: Spanish-American WarSweden: Treaty of Fredrikshamn, Assassination of Olof Palme, M/S Estonia shipwreck, Gothenburg riots, Gothenburg discothèque fire, 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamiUnited Kingdom: Battle of the Somme, Death of Diana, Princess of WalesUnited States: American Civil War, Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Vietnam War, September 11, 2001 attacks
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Negotiating collective trauma:Advertising Truth and Reconciliation in Liberia, 2009