Description
Book SynopsisPsychologists have done a great deal of research on the effects of trauma on the individual, revealing the paradox that violent experiences are often secreted away beyond easy accessibility, becoming impossible to verbalize explicitly.
Trade Review “This collection of consistently interesting articles contributes to the very boom in studies of memory towards which the editors ambiguously claim some skepticism.” · JRAI
“[This volume] is an important anthropological contribution to this expanding field [of memories of past violence]...The ethnographic diversity of the chapters allows for cross-cultural comparison and, as the editors themselves underscore, for different methodological and analytical approaches.” · Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale
“This collection of essays marks out fertile ground for anthropological investigations of memories of violence and trauma…the fine-grained analyses [ the wide ranging case studies contain] give the lie to any simplistic, ethnocentric and yet unversalising, explanations…it throws a stunning critical spotlight upon many contemporary ‘Western’ therapeutic approaches that insist upon the ‘talking cure’…It makes a valuable contribution to the anthropology of time, memory and violence and is suitable for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate courses.” · Anthroplogical Notebooks
"This is a rich and stimulating collection...Taken together [these chapters] provide an excellent antidote to simplistic medical or psychological approaches to the long-term effects of violence on victims and their families." · Paul Antze, York University, Toronto
"[A] timely and important collection that brings together a number of current literatures in anthropology and memory studies...The volume enriches and complicates the study of memory, while making at the same time a strong case for the distinctiveness of anthropology’s potential to contribute to such an enterprise." · Stuart McLean, University of Minnesota
Table of Contents Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Introduction: Remembering Violence
Nicolas Argenti and Katharina Schramm
Bodies of Memory
Chapter 2. Rape and Remembrance in Guadeloupe
Janine Klungel
Chapter 3. Uncanny Memories, Violence and Indigenous Medicine in Southern Chile
Dorthe Kristensen
Performance
Chapter 4. Memories of Initiation Violence: Remembered Pain and Religious Transmission among the Bulongic (Guinea, Conakry)
David Berliner
Chapter 5. Nationalizing Personal Trauma, Personalizing National Redemption: Performing Testimony at Auschwitz-Birkenau
Jackie Feldman
Landscapes, Memoryscapes and the Materiality of Objects
Chapter 6. Memories of Slavery: Narrating History in Ritual
Adelheid Pichler
Chapter 7. In a Ruined Country: Place and the Memory of War Destruction in Argonne (France)
Paola Filippucci
Generations: Chasms and Bridges
Chapter 8. Silent Legacies of Trauma: A Comparative Study of Cambodian Canadian and Israeli Holocaust Trauma Descendant Memory Work
Carol Kidron
Chapter 9. The Transmission of Traumatic Loss: A Case Study in Taiwan
Stephan Feuchtwang
Chapter 10. Afterword
Rosalind Shaw
