The politics of commemoration: The Holocaust, memory and trauma

Assuming that the consequences of devastating events for individuals and collectivities run different courses, why do we use the word ‘trauma’ to explain a wide array of social and cultural phenomenon? Trauma has traveled far to become a key not only to explain, as originally conceived wounds to the body, but also injuries to spirit, culture, society and politics. Trauma has proliferated into a metaphor deployed to explain almost everything unpleasant that happens to us as individuals and as members of political communities. How do we conceptualize the transition from the trauma of the individual to the traumatized community? What does trauma mean for a theoretical formulation of collective memory? What are the social, legal and political dimensions that inform representations of collective traumata? Wulf Kansteiner (2004) provides an insightful history of the metaphoric diffusion of trauma, criticizing its loose deployment as inadequate. He points out that it is misleading to compare the trauma of an individual survivor to a broader public that has not experienced any comparable violence.