Rethinking collective trauma in the 20th century: Memory, victimhood and the temporality of the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

This paper aims to address the conceptual and ethical problems that arise when scholars of contemporary European history resort to the notion of collective trauma. Different historical works on the reconstruction of Europe in the second half of the 20th century have relied on the notion of trauma to grasp the evolution of the memory of violence. More specifically, however, this paper focuses on the problems that arise from defining the Spanish Civil War as a collective trauma by examining the antagonistic ways in which the traumas derived from this conflict have been embodied.