Memory, Uncanny, and Spectrality in Joseph Skibell’s A Blessing on the Moon

The Forgotten Apocalypse:Katherine Anne Porter's "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," Traumatic Memory, and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 David A. Davis (bio) As Katherine Anne Porter's short novel "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" opens, Miranda fitfully endures a vivid nightmare. She sees herself on horseback desperately racing from Death, the pale rider, who has already taken her grandfather, an aunt, a cousin, her "decrepit hound, and [her] silver kitten," and when he reaches her, she realizes that "he is no stranger to [her]" (270). Her nightmare tangles images of life and death with images of remembering and forgetting, and the relationship between survival and memory is a recurring motif in the story. Porter's allusion to the apocalyptic horseman described in Revelation proves to be appropriate because the story takes places during the influenza pandemic of 1918, the greatest public health catastrophe in modern history. The interplay between death and memory in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" gives an aesthetic dimension to the pandemic's horrifying consequences and raises questions about literature as a form of traumatic memory. In the spring of 2009 fear of a swine flu pandemic and ongoing fear of a potential avian flu pandemic awakened dormant memories of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Global health officials mounted a campaign of contagion preparedness, and many officials still see another human pandemic as inevitable, if not imminent. To mitigate this potential disaster, scientists, epidemiologists, and government officials worldwide are looking [End Page 55] to the 1918 pandemic as a worst-case scenario as they develop contingency response plans. Before the emergence of the current virus, however, the 1918 influenza pandemic had largely disappeared from cultural memory. Few references to the 1918 pandemic exist in literature, popular culture, or even in history books, which makes Porter's story an important record of the outbreak. In the story, Miranda, a reporter for a Denver newspaper, enjoys a whirlwind romance with Adam Barclay, a young Army officer, until she collapses from the virus. Adam nurses her as she comes near to death, and while she recovers, he returns to his unit where he dies from the virus. Porter based "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" on her personal experience as an influenza survivor, and it is the most significant American literary work set during the pandemic. The novella illustrates the varieties of traumatic experience—personal trauma, cultural trauma, historical trauma, and aesthetic trauma. The story takes place in a unique and profound historical context, both because of Porter's personal traumatic experience and because memories of the pandemic have faded. "We Have Forgotten the Dead": Individual Trauma and Collective Memory In Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History, Cathy Caruth describes trauma as a "wound of the mind—the breach in the mind's experience of time, self, and the world—[that] is not, like a wound of the body, a simple and healable event, but rather an event that . . . is experienced too soon, too unexpectedly, to be fully known and is therefore not available to consciousness until it imposes itself again, repeatedly, in the nightmares and repetitive actions of the survivor" (4). Most trauma theorists locate trauma's impact in the individual memory, where the unsettling experience disrupts the victim's identity, but when a disruptive event affects a large population simultaneously, a collective trauma occurs. The influenza pandemic of 1918 complicates the distinction between individual trauma and collective trauma. One might stipulate that collective trauma merely consists of numerous individual traumas, but collective trauma amplifies the individual's experience by taxing the network of social resources that ordinarily stabilize the individual victim. Massive events such as wars, natural disasters, and pandemics have different dynamics than personal events such as crime, accidents, and illness.1 In both individual and collective forms of trauma, the event's impact lies not in the immediate experience but in the survivors' memory [End Page 56] of the event. Exploring the distinction between individual trauma and collective trauma leads to an explanation for how and why the pandemic has virtually disappeared from collective memory. Katherine Anne Porter survived the influenza pandemic of 1918. She worked for The Rocky Mountain News during the outbreak, and she contracted influenza as the...

Introduction. Ukraine is experiencing a great upheaval - a large-scale war. This distressing situation affects the entire population of the country, therefore, beyond any doubt, the term "collective traumatization" can be used for today's situation in Ukraine. Modern research and study of the impact of collective trauma in Ukraine refers to the analysis of its negative consequences on various spheres of life, including the sphere of mental health: identification of the level of anxiety, psychological consequences, symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorders. Although, the study of the impact of a powerful collective trauma on future generations Ukrainians needs timely planning and preparation. The aim of study: to conduct a theoretical analysis of approaches to the study of the concept of "collective trauma", to study the concept of memory in the understanding of collective trauma, to analyze the peredictors and preventors of transgenerational transmission of collective trauma, to consider the epigenetic mechanisms of collective trauma, to investigate the research psychometric tools on the transmission of transgenerational trauma between generations, to investigate the specifics of the collective trauma of the population of Ukraine. Method. A literature search was conducted in the scientific databases of Web of Science, Scopus, Pub Med, Google Scholar using the keywords "collective trauma", "traumatic memory", "transgenerational trauma", "cultural trauma", "multigenerational legacies of trauma" in the period from 2002 to 2023. 17,720 sources were identified. Inclusion criteria were: (a) controlled randomized research (b) on preventors and predictors of transmission of collective trauma (c) to subsequent generations. The results. 46 international publications were included in the literature review, and predictors and preventers of the transmission of trauma through generations were analyzed from the standpoint of attachment theory, family systems, and epigenetics. Most authors note the presence of a link between the parents' trauma and the mental health of the offspring, the greater intensity of the reparative adaptive styles the greater is the risk of developing affective or anxiety disorders in the offspring. The studies of epigenetic mechanisms of the transgenerational impact of trauma have shown the presence of changes in the methylation of the FKMB-5 gene in Holocaust survivors and their descendants. The collective trauma experienced by the people of Ukraine at the times of war has its own specificity, which distinguishes it from other collective traumas, including those experienced directly by the Ukrainian people in the past (the Holodomor, the Second World War, the Holocaust, the disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant). In order to further conduct research and study the transmission of war trauma in Ukraine through subsequent generations and to identify possible factors of resistance, the "Danieli Inventory of Multigenerational legacies of trauma" was adapted for the Ukrainian context of war (Appendix 1). Conclusions. Research on a topic of multigenerational legacies of collective trauma is a debatable issue. Research on factors of transgenetic changes in large groups in Ukraine is needed. Research on the next generations should include (a) large-scale genetic studies, (b) analysis on plevalence and distribution of mental health disorders in children of war veterans and the survivors of collective trauma, (c) changes in social behavior of the new generations.

The theory of trauma has been one of the current approaches in scientific discourse since the 90s of the 20th century, the foundation for its study was laid in the American humanities and social sciences, which later became the subject of study by researchers in various fields and profiles. Rising tide of interest towards collective trauma or traumatic memory was conditioned by wars or difficult post-conflict psychological status of people, who had to deal with both trauma-containing memories and struggle against them. It should be noted, that the paradigms defining collective trauma have been determinative in the Georgian media since the 1990s, which was related to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on the one hand, and the difficult political or social situation caused by the events of April 9, Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Ossetian conflicts and civil war. Here we also would like to note that the Georgian media has become a source of inspiration for those creators, in the literary narrative of which so-called war literature was formed and acquired different perspectives. At this stage, the subject of our interest is to comprehend the Georgian media space in the context of theories of traumatic memory, we will focus on the material of the 90s, which presents the narrative of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict, also on the modern discourse of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which will allow us to study by the method of comparative analysis and determine, how the concepts of collective trauma are reflected in the media space. Keywords: Collective trauma, traumatic memory, narrative, Georgian media.

Collective trauma is a cataclysmic event that shatters the basic fabric of society. Aside from the horrific loss of life, collective trauma is also a crisis of meaning. The current paper systematically delineates the process that begins with a collective trauma, transforms into a collective memory, and culminates in a system of meaning that allows groups to redefine who they are and where they are going. For victims, the memory of trauma may be adaptive for group survival, but also elevates existential threat, which prompts a search for meaning, and the construction of a trans-generational collective self. For perpetrators, the memory of trauma poses a threat to collective identity that may be addressed by denying history, minimizing culpability for wrongdoing, transforming the memory of the event, closing the door on history, or accepting responsibility. The acknowledgment of responsibility often comes with disidentification from the group. The dissonance between historical crimes and the need to uphold a positive image of the group may be resolved, however, in another manner; it may prompt the creation of a new group narrative that acknowledges the crime and uses it as a backdrop to accentuate the current positive actions of the group. For both victims and perpetrators, deriving meaning from trauma is an ongoing process that is continuously negotiated within groups and between groups; it is responsible for debates over memory, but also holds the promise of providing a basis for intergroup understanding.

The Struggle for Wholeness: Addressing Individual and Collective Trauma in Violence-Ridden Societies

The aim of this article is to address to what extent some institutional form of remembering the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) as a collective trauma could be considered an instance of Jeffrey Alexander and Neil Smelzer´s notion of ’cultural trauma‘. Or to put it in other words, in which sense the notion of cultural trauma may cast a new light on one of the different ways in which the Spanish Civil War was remembered and retold during the transition to democracy (1977-83). Spanish society remembered the war as a collective trauma, so painful that it encouraged society to promote a ‘pact of oblivion’ toward victims of Francoist repression. According to this traumatic memory, the Spanish Civil War was a ‘fratricidal struggle’, whose outbreak was a consequence of the tensions that underlie Spanish history. It led to the blurring of distinctions between victims and culprits because both sides were considered equally responsible. Therefore, everyone could claim the ownership of suffering. However, this representation did not fit in with the historical records; it was a consequence of the social influence of some ‘memory makers’ that developed new narratives and re-defined the ownership of suffering. Because of this divergence between the historical record of the war and society’s traumatic memory of it during the transition to democracy, I would like to analyse the possibility of studying the nature of the latter by means of the concept of cultural trauma. After all, Alexander´s critique of psychoanalytical insight into collective trauma could be useful when analysing traumatic historical experiences where it is not clear whether the traumatic nature of those memories come from the events themselves or from the cultural frames that attributed significance to those events.

Toni Morrison's "Recitatif" rigorously examines the relationship of trauma and racial memory, illustrating the influence of personal and collective trauma on identity formation. Morrison examines the formation and reinforcement of racial dynamics through memory by focusing on Twyla and Roberta, two girls from disparate ethnic backgrounds who share a traumatic childhood experience. The narrative's intentional racial ambiguity prompts readers to examine their own racial prejudices, while the characters' developing relationships underscore how racial memory—rooted in societal frameworks and individual histories—persistently shapes their existence. Morrison’s tale illustrates the intersection of trauma and race, with the characters’ collective and distinct experiences mirroring the wider racialised trauma present in American society. The narrative serves as a contemplation on the recollection, reconstruction, and interconnection of trauma with racial identity, illustrating the profound and enduring influence of racial history on personal experiences. Consequently, this paper intends to explore the relationship of trauma and racial memory represented in “Recitatif” in the light of trauma studies and to trace the aetiology of those in the practices of racism.This essay additionally explores the prospect of healing from the wound of trauma as evinced by Morrison. Keywords: Toni Morrison, Recitatif, trauma, racial memory, identity, racial ambiguity, collective trauma, childhood trauma, race and identity, memory studies

The article analyzes the issue of family memory in the sense of identity, of family and socio-cultural belonging formation processes. The transformations in family memory following the discontinuity of family experience, with particular reference to parenting and adoptive filiation, are observed from the analysis of autobiographical and traumatic memory functions. Observing memory formation processes in biological and adoptive parenting can detect the impact that narrative has on the representation of the self, of the family and of social context. In relational discontinuity experiences, family narratives work on the family transition process and on another bonding and family membership formation process. Attention is paid to the analysis of the impact that the trauma of family separation has on memory processing and, in particular, on the implicit and explicit autobiographical memory to get to define the role of the adoptive family in narrative processes and in family memory formation.

This chapter proffers a re-reading of “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” using the perspectives of gender studies and trauma studies. Using feminist criticism to critique the protagonist, the chapter places her against the socio-cultural context of first-wave feminism. Katherine Anne Porter’s protagonist, Miranda Gay, longs for independence, freedom and autonomy. The short story addresses the challenges and demands placed on a young woman in her quest for autonomy. Porter chooses Denver, Colorado for Miranda to begin a new life, away from the South and away from her past. She escapes the South and its feudalistic and oppressive hold on women but has to combat sexism in the mythical West. This is understood best if one takes into account the full trilogy of the collection Pale Horse, Pale Rider especially “Old Mortality”. In the newspaper job dominated by men, Miranda is forced to adapt to a discourse which is not natural to her. The newspaper tries to control her finances too. The setting of the eponymous short story is against the backdrop of the First World War and the Spanish influenza pandemic. Miranda’s challenging experiences and individual trauma are set against a collective trauma, intensified within this very sombre historical context. The young twenty-four-year-old spirited journalist manifests hopeful expectations that soon lead to a life-threatening conflict as Porter’s story portrays her indulging in a brief love affair with Adam Barclay, a young Army officer. In the story, Miranda’s romance also gets associated with trauma. Within the domains of history and art, Porter shows the continuous reaction of individual consciousness towards external traumatic events. Porter used the works of Albrecht Dürer as the structural and thematic references for her apocalyptic work. “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” becomes a piece of literature as traumatic memory and shows a constant interplay between memory and death. Trauma, aestheticized and bound by fictionalization, is also partially shared by the reader. As Porter fictionalizes her traumatic past experience, she simultaneously blends individual trauma with collective trauma, by linking her personal experience to the experience of millions – the survivors of the war and survivors of the Spanish influenza pandemic. After the terrible ordeal Miranda emerges as a woman triumphant and empowered.

This chapter discusses cinematic intermediality in Jasmila Žbanić's film, For Those Who Can Tell No Tales (2013) as a modality of addressing the traumatic memory of atrocities and mass rapes committed during the 1992–1995 Bosnian war. Traumatic memory is not primarily formed through symbols or narratives but rather resembles ?a wounded body’ (Broderick–Traverso), and therefore it may disrupt cultural strategies of memorialisation, narrativization and representation through which personal, collective or historical trauma is approached. In Žbanić's film, intermediality becomes a mode of addressing collective trauma by ‘acknowledging’ the unrepresentable within representation and by foregrounding the interstitial and corporeal aspect of traumatic memory. The intermedial cinematic discourse that incorporates photofilmic pictures, fragments of performance art and practices of non-cinematic image-making (such as amateur video diary) performs an irresolute and affective memorialisation of war trauma engaging the viewer in potentially transformative memory work.

Tapping on Collective National Trauma

The article explores the phenomenon of collective trauma related to the historical experience of the forced relocation of the Churapchians during the Great Patriotic War and its transformation into a resource for forming resilient life strategies. Based on sociological research and analysis of commemorative practices (family narratives, institutional forms of commemoration, media channels), it examines how the traumatic experience endured by the first generation of migrants is processed into socially adaptive qualities in subsequent generations. Special attention is given to the mechanisms of "trauma processing" and its role in shaping collective identity, social solidarity, and a high level of patriotic sentiment among the residents of the village of Churapcha. The conclusions of the study are of significant interest for further research in the field of memory sociology, intergenerational studies, and the study of the ethno-cultural diversity of Russian society. The study employs the methodology of cultural trauma by P. Sztompka; the theory of cultural memory developed by A. Assmann; and the theory of "social frames of memory" by M. Halbwachs. The empirical basis of the research consists of the results of a sociological survey of 250 descendants of migrants and 100 residents of the village of Churapcha, materials from in-depth interviews with residents of the village of Bakhsy, and archival data. The main conclusions of the study are that the historical experience of forced relocation has a significant and lasting impact on the life strategies of descendants, manifesting in their social adaptation, professional self-identification, and migration attitudes. In the process of intergenerational transmission, this experience transforms: the traumatic narratives of the first generation of Churapchian migrants evolve into adaptive strategies in the second and are integrated into the ethno-cultural identity of the third. The formation of these resilient strategies is determined by family memory, social support, an emphasis on education, and a combination of traditional and modern values. Ultimately, the historical experience is reinterpreted in collective memory, transforming from vulnerability into a resource for adaptation, which indicates the mechanism of "trauma processing" into socially adaptive qualities.

The concept of post-memory, introduced by Marianne Hirsch, offers a framework for understanding how collective memory is transmitted across generations. This study examines intergenerational trauma through a qualitative descriptive analysis of Christina Baker Klein's novel Orphan Train. It focuses on Vivian Daly’s traumatic experiences as an orphan train rider and their impact on her identity and familial memory. The research aims to explore how Vivian’s past shapes her understanding of her history, her role within her family narrative, and how family narratives and inherited objects contribute to preserving memory and transmitting trauma intergenerationally. Findings reveal that family narratives and objects play a critical role in maintaining memory and shaping familial identity. These elements not only preserve individual experiences but also act as conduits for transmitting collective trauma across generations. Contextually, this study highlights the broader relevance of post-memory in social situations such as migration or cultural conflict, where trauma influence’s identity formation and community ties. By situating its findings within the discourse on collective memory and trauma, this research contributes to understanding how personal and familial histories intersect to shape intergenerational identities. This study underscores the importance of considering intergenerational trauma in analysing collective memory processes. Keywords: Collective Memory; Family Narratives; Intergenerational Trauma; Post-Memory

A presente proposta visa reunir trabalhos em torno da temática Memórias de Guerra em Experiências Literárias Africanas e de como a escrita tem elaborado traumas coletivos. Evocando noções como narrativa, trajetórias e memória, pensamos que é possível observar como os processos de recordação e elaboração têm se construído através da escrita literária. O que essas narrativas mobilizam de suas paisagens coletivas? como narram os enfrentamentos e as consequências da guerra civil? como se esboçam nessas narrativas as trajetórias desses escritores, de seus países e de seus repertórios culturais? Enfim, como são mobilizados em suas escritas as recordações. Que espaços da recordação são mobilizados na montagem de suas escrituras? A memória do trauma é uma forma de recuperar na fragilidade dos rastros individuais a compreensão para a história e para as condições socioantropológicas de cada sociedade. Propomos reunir, neste Dossiê, reflexões que ponham em diálogo preocupações do campo das ciências humanas, sociais e literárias que nos permitam refletir sobre essas experiências nas literaturas africanas.

Is a Financial Crisis a Trauma? Paul Crosthwaite (bio) The term "traumatic" has no other sense than an economic one. Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis Is a financial crisis a trauma? More hangs on this question than might at first appear, for if, as I hope to demonstrate, the answer is yes, then profound implications follow for issues of major importance in critical thought, including the power of symbolic systems to shape experience and material conditions, the challenge of representing disastrous events, and the status of the much-vaunted "return of the Real." To acknowledge a financial crisis as being a trauma, in the particular sense I articulate in this essay, is to overturn conventional assumptions about the relationship between the material and the immaterial in social life. It is common, of course, for media commentators to refer to financial crises—from the Great Crash of 1929 to the Black Monday crash of 1987 to the "credit crunch" of recent years—as traumas. Academic experts in individual and collective trauma—psychologists, psychoanalysts, social scientists, historians—also frequently analyze financial upheavals in these terms. In National Trauma and Collective Memory (1998), for example, the sociologist Arthur G. Neal observes that "the initial jolt to the economic system [that] came with the stock market crash of October 24, 1929" meant that "the initial trauma of the Great Depression fell disproportionately upon the more privileged members of society who had overextended themselves in the financial markets" (42). Writing in 2009, the psychoanalyst Robert D. Stolorow, author of Trauma and Human Existence (2007), defines "our current economic crisis" as a "collective trauma" (par. 1). Researchers have also assembled empirical evidence to the effect that deaths from illnesses known to [End Page 34] be more prevalent among individuals exposed to traumatic stress rise in societies undergoing systemic financial crises (see James, 137). Fatal cases of heart disease and cancer, for example, increased markedly in New York City (where investors in the stock market were disproportionately located) between 1929 and 1932. As Harold James comments, "It is clear that the financial panic was accompanied by a rise in physiological stress, which was a reaction to the sense that the future consisted literally and psychically of loss and renunciation" (137-38). In a survey gauging reactions to the 1987 Black Monday crash, symptoms associated with traumatic stress, such as difficulty concentrating, sweaty palms, tightness in the chest, and rapid pulse, were reported by over 20 percent of the individual investors who responded and by more than 40 percent of the institutional investors (Shiller, 11). These studies invite further investigation into the distribution across different professions, classes, genders, ethnicities, and regions of the traumatic symptoms identified, and they prompt comparison between the prevalence and severity of these symptoms and those generated by other forms of social dislocation. They raise questions, too, over whether the traumatic effects of specifically financial crises can be distinguished from those stemming from the wider economic problems (bankruptcy, unemployment, foreclosure, etc.) that often follow stock market crashes and bank insolvencies. Important as they are, these secondary issues, however, assert themselves so readily only if the question with which I began is interpreted as asking something like, "are the effects of financial crises consistent with prevailing clinical diagnostic and social scientific definitions of trauma?" Other, more formal and philosophical issues come to the fore if, instead, it is understood that the question at stake is whether a financial crisis constitutes a trauma in the distinct and precise sense theorized by Jacques Lacan: an encounter with the Real.1 Lacan offers this theorization in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, his seminar of 1964. There, he introduces the concept of the tuché, which he borrows from Aristotle on accidental causality and "translates" as "the encounter with the real" (1981, 53, emphasis in original). In psychoanalysis, Lacan explains, "the function of the tuché, of the real as encounter," finds its privileged form in "the trauma" (55). Because, for Lacan, the Real is fundamentally incompatible with, and therefore cannot be punctually assimilated to, the symbolic codes [End Page 35] that structure subjectivity, the traumatic encounter is "essentially the missed encounter" (55); yet the effects of this encounter...