Why Memory is a Red Herring in the Recovered (Traumatic) Memory Debate

Queer and trauma theory both concern internal experiences that challenge normative social frameworks. Considering the roles of queerness within trauma and memory studies opens interpretive pathways for otherwise discredited or inaccessible meanings. It also relates survivors’ receding knowledge to those currently “queered” or endangered. With a focus on childhood and mother-child relationships, this article maps intersections of memory studies, queer theory, and trauma theory, applying subsequent insights to an “autotheoretical” analysis of the author’s own transnational, post-Holocaust family across four generations. It explores the possibility through queer studies of excavating new post-traumatic meanings and relating those meanings to present contexts.

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Re-membering Syria’s Traumatic Past: Gender, Poetics, and Loss in Manhal al-Sarrāj’s As a River Should

Journal of Arabic Literature ◽

10.1163/1570064x-12341424 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 52 (1-2) ◽

pp. 202-227

Author(s):

Linda Istanbulli

Keyword(s):

Armed Conflict ◽

Armed Conflicts ◽

Traumatic Memory ◽

The Novel ◽

Historical Interpretation ◽

The Past ◽

Traumatic History ◽

History Of ◽

And Gender ◽

The City

Abstract In a system where the state maintains a monopoly over historical interpretation, aesthetic investigations of denied traumatic memory become a space where the past is confronted, articulated, and deemed usable both for understanding the present and imagining the future. This article focuses on Kamā yanbaghī li-nahr (As a river should) by Manhal al-Sarrāj, one of the first Syrian novels to openly break the silence on the “1982 Hama massacre.” Engaging the politics and poetics of trauma remembrance, al-Sarrāj places the traumatic history of the city of Hama within a longer tradition of loss and nostalgia, most notably the poetic genre of rithāʾ (elegy) and the subgenre of rithāʾ al-mudun (city elegy). In doing so, Kamā yanbaghī li-nahr functions as a literary counter-site to official histories of the events of 1982, where threatened memory can be preserved. By investigating the intricate relationship between armed conflict and gender, the novel mourns Hama’s loss while condemning the violence that engendered it. The novel also makes new historical interpretations possible by reproducing the intricate relationship between mourning, violence, and gender, dislocating the binary lines around which official narratives of armed conflicts are typically constructed.

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Introduction. “If I Forget You, O Jerusalem”: Traumatic Memory And The Fall Of Zion

City of Ruins ◽

10.1163/ej.9789004181816.i-231.6 ◽

2010 ◽

pp. 1-28

Keyword(s):

Traumatic Memory

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State Terrorism, Clandestine Language: Notes on the Argentine Military Dictatorship

PMLA ◽

10.1632/pmla.2009.124.5.1794 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 124 (5) ◽

pp. 1794-1799

Author(s):

Mirta Alejandra Antonelli

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

State Policies ◽

Traumatic Memory ◽

Military Dictatorship ◽

Human Rights Organizations ◽

Successive State ◽

State Terrorism ◽

Governmental Intervention ◽

Historical Truth

Today the argentine judiciary dispenses ritual punishment as it condemns the oppressors of the last military dictatorship (1976–83) in the name of historical truth. Human rights organizations and movements have contributed immeasurably to this end. More than two decades have passed since the historic military-juntas trial (1985), and over the years successive state policies have proved that traumatic memory is a contested site, subject in this postdictatorial democracy to both debate and governmental intervention.

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