Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2025
Chapter 6 discusses the representation of memory in trauma narratives. Accounts of victims of childhood trauma are contrasted with the testimony of Holocaust survivors. I argue that that the distinctive qualities of trauma narratives can also be understood as differences in the culturally constructed landscapes of memory that shapes the distance and effort to remember affectively charged and socially defined events. Landscapes of memory draw from implicit models of memory that influence what can be recalled and warranted as accurate. Trauma narratives involve cultural models and metaphors of personal and historical memory. For them to function as personal and collective history, there must be public places for them to be told, acknowledged, and retold. The political recognition of collective identity and history can help create such a place. Individuals’ stories, in turn, can serve as testimony to ground collective history and call for further moral and political response. Understanding the personal, social, and political meanings of trauma in theory and practice requires tracing the systemic loops that link memory, symptom, and response with a landscape of cultural affordances.
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