If we use the definition of Kai Erikson, we can argue that the arrival of the communists to power in Central and Eastern Europe provoked a cultural trauma. According to Erikson, a cultural trauma is "a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of communality." Furthermore, the concept of cultural trauma can be instrumental in understanding the way people talk about events which disrupted their personal, social and collective life. Jeffrey C. Alexander underlines that cultural trauma provides meaning to the narratives of individuals and communities "when … (they) feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways."
Based on my previous research findings, I can argue that we can understand the narratives of repressed people as well as of the first generation born after the WWII through the concept of cultural trauma. In order to see if cultural trauma can also explain the discourse of second and third generations of people born during communism and/or soon after its fall, I have collected interviews with children and grandchildren of the former political detainees. I was wondering if their discourse is also fashioned by the cultural trauma lived and narrated by theirs ancestors. Several questions are to be answered after the thematic and structural analysis of the sources: Has cultural trauma impacted the life trajectories of the off-spring of the repressed people? Does it create specific attitudes towards the society, the social group, etc.? Can we talk about a postgeneration creating its postmemory? Does the cultural memory play a role in fashioning these generations memories or are they solely influenced by the communicative memory? Do the children/grand-children of former political detainees deliver a similar discourse? How they build their own relationship with the past of their ancestors but also of their community, social group, and the today society?
As my research focuses on the children and grandchildren of former political detainees, the concept of "postmemory", as defined by Marianne Hirsch, can be useful in understanding the relationship of the off-spring with theirs parents/grandparents past. When it comes to the off-spring of the former political detainees can we talk about a memory "mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation?"
My presentation will provide answers to these questions as well as to the general inquiry about using concepts coined and used to make sense of the memory in the Western world in understanding our region rapport to the past and present.
