Abstract

SHARIM, Dariela; KOVALSKYS, Juana; MORALES, Germán  and  CORNEJO, Marcela. Psychosocial Trauma and Memory: Designing a Biographical Framework to Investigate the Impact of the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture in Chile. rev.estud.soc. [online]. 2011, n.40, pp.81-88. ISSN 0123-885X.

This article proposes a theoretical and methodological framework with which to investigate the social impact of the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture in Chile. It will allow us to examine elaborative processes that unfold from the experience of remembering and/or recognizing traumatic experiences tied to State violence. This Biographical Approach seeks to collect the life stories of professionals who listened first-hand to the testimonies of the victims who appeared before the Commission. The aim, in other words, is to listen to the "State listeners," including the researchers as new listeners incorporated into a chain of mutual recognition. Comprehending these openly elaborative processes based on such experiences allows us to understand not only the specific impact on these professionals themselves, but also, based on the same individual accounts, to examine the social construction of memories related to the traumas produced by State violence.

Keywords : Psychosocial Trauma; Memory and Forgetting; Elaborative Processes; Biographical Approach.

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