Collective Traumas

Collective Traumas is about the traumatic European history of the 20 century - war, genocide, dictatorship, ethnic cleansing - and how individuals, communities and nations have dealt with their dark past through remembrance, historiography and legal settlements. Memories, and especially collective memories, serve as foundations for national identities and are politically charged. Regardless whether memory is used to support or to challenge established ideologies, it is inevitably subject to political tensions. Consequently, memory, history and amnesia tend to be used and abused for different political and ideological purposes. From the perspectives of historical, literary and visual studies the essays focus on how the experiences of war and profound conflict have been represented and remembered in different national cultures and communities.
This volume is a vital contribution to memory studies and trauma theory.
Collective Traumas is a result of the multidisciplinary research project on Memory Culture that was initiated in 2002 at Karlstad University, Sweden. A previous publication with Peter Lang is Memory Work: The Theory and Practice of Memory (2005).

Autorentext

The Editors: Conny Mithander is Senior Lecturer in History of Ideas at Karlstad University, Sweden.
John Sundholm is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Karlstad University, Sweden and Reader in Cultural Analysis at Åbo Akademi University, Finland.
Maria Holmgren Troy is Reader in English at Karlstad University, Sweden.

Inhalt

Contents: Bo Stråth: Preface - Klas-Göran Karlsson: Memory of Mass Murder. The Genocide in Armenian and Non-Armenian Historical Consciousness - Maria Holmgren Troy: The Novelist as an Agent of Collective Remembrance. Pat Barker and the First World War - Kristian Gerner: Open Wounds? Trianon, the Holocaust and the Hungarian Trauma - John Sundholm: «The Unknown Soldier.» Film as a Founding Trauma and National Monument - Malgorzata Pakier: Agnieszka Holland's Europa, Europa as a Critical Voice in the Polish Debate on the Second World War - Conny Mithander: «Let Us Forget the Evil Memories.» Nazism and the Second World War from the Perspective of a Swedish Fascist - Adrian Velicu: The Memory of Unexpressed Trauma. The Romanian 1960s - Billy Gray: Skeletons in the Historical Cupboard. Reflections on Irish National Memory in Joseph O'Neill's Blood-Dark Track.