On the Social Distribution of Soldiers’ Memories: Normalization, Trauma, and Morality

Abstract

This chapter aims to address the interrelationship between personal and national memories of war as reflected by the recollections of different generations of combatants among Israeli society. This multi-generational observation offers the analysis a dynamic dimension and enables us to learn of how the interrelationship between personal and national memory changes in different historical-cultural contexts, and in accordance with the nature of the fighting. More particularly, the article aims to explore the cultural discourses that shape the field of memory within which the subjects remembering operate. That is, to identify the different discourses that grant meaning to the combat experience, track their changes over time, examine their interplay, and situate the mode through which they shape personal memories and are shaped by them. In the analysis, special attention was paid to the various shifting manifestations of the trauma discourse that has become central to shaping Israeli war memory compared to other discourses: the heroic, critical, and resilience. The tension between the discourses and ongoing interpretive shift from heroism to resilience and vulnerability creates a new category of meaning for personal memories of war, which I refer to as “normalized trauma.”