Frosh, Stephen (2019) Postmemory. American Journal of Psychoanalysis 79 (2), pp. 156-173. ISSN 0002-9548.
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Abstract
The urgency of the problem of how to learn from the relatively recent past in order not to repeat its devastating effects, a problem that revolves around the ethics of memory and history, has combined with an awareness that later generations of victims and perpetrators – the ‘post’ generations – may find themselves inhibited in relation to moving forwards because they are not truly ‘post’ at all. It is as if they are haunted by the experiences of their predecessors, which is passed on in some way through stories and selective silences, as well as through the older generation’s ways of handling themselves and the personal and cultural representations of their situation. This article presents a psychoanalytic reading of the postmemory literature, drawing on second generation Holocaust literature and in particular rendering the distinction between postmemory as a mode of traumatic identification and postmemorial work as a form of ‘working through’. Active memorial work that allows repetitions to be turned into processes of recovery is essential for the laying of ghosts to rest.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | postmemory, Holocaust, trauma, working-through |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Stephen Frosh |
| Date Deposited: | 27 Mar 2019 15:45 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:50 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/26922 |
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