Collective trauma and group identity

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the nature of collective trauma and the social consequences of traumatic experiences. In the course of the investigation, it was shown that collective trauma arises as an emotional reaction of a group of people to unexpected and exceptional events, chewing in memory and destroying the established notions of people about the world and themselves and changing identity. Trauma is always a wound, but not a sentence. It is possible to heal wounds and avoid collective disorientation caused by trauma with the help of representation accompanied by ritual. The recollection and recognition of a traumatic experience contributes to its transformation from the eternal present into a dramatic memory of the past, which, with proper political support, can acquire considerable consolidating potential. Inserting a traumatic experience into a system of images meaningful to a collective identity by spreading a discourse aimed at informing society about the presence of a trauma, it is customary to call it cultural trauma. It doesn’t arise as a result of the direct experience of traumatic events, but also through the inclusion in social practices of the transfer of cultural heritage.