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