Kollektive Traumata - "Erlebensgemeinschaft", Diskurs und Aneignung

Abstract

Collective, Chosen or Cultural Trauma? Violent Pasts Between Experience of Trauma and Cultural Interpretation The concept of "trauma", which has been applied to describe physical and later also psychological wounds in individuals, is now increasingly used for collective wounds as well. Examples from peace and conflict studies show ambivalent effects of this new trauma discourse: On the one hand it carries increased psychological sensitivity (e. g. for needs and problems of victims), on the other hand there is the danger of confounding political and psychological problems. In this article I am pleading for a more complex understanding of "collective trauma", which would combine a social constructionist perspective on the discursive and cultural production of "collective trauma" with a psychological perspective on the lived experience of individual trauma. After experiences of collective violence one can state that there is always a group of people who are traumatized victims of violence and thus share a "collective traumatization". Members of large groups (nations) can then interpret the same violent events as a symbolic attack on themselves (that is: on the large group) as well and claim that it is their "collective trauma", too. It is important to note that the nature of the event, cultural interpretations and different forms of a sense of belonging contribute to a complicated process, in which a "collective trauma" is being formed.