Abstract

CABRERA SANCHEZ, José. Transgenerational Trauma and Post-memory Among the Grandchildren of Victims of the Chilean Dictatorship. rev.estud.soc. [online]. 2023, n.84, pp.59-76.  Epub Mar 17, 2023. ISSN 0123-885X.  https://doi.org/10.7440/res84.2023.04.

This article is the result of a research project whose objective was to analyze memory building among the grandchildren of victims of human rights violations during the Chilean dictatorship, and which attempted to identify and interpret post-memorial work strategies related to the elaboration of the traumatic memory transmitted by previous generations. The conceptual framework is based on two theoretical proposals: psychoanalytic approaches to trauma and the concept of post-memory developed by Marianne Hirsch. Both theoretical references are congruent with the qualitative nature of the research, as they sustain an interpretative approach to processes of meaning that unfold discursively. They inform on phenomena of subjectivation that reveal the interweaving of the individual and the social in the constitution of memory, and the processes of transmission between generations that participate in memory building and the elaboration of trauma. The methodology is qualitative and is based on the analysis of semi-structured focused interviews with fifteen grandchildren of political prisoners or disappeared detainees of the Chilean civil-military dictatorship. We conclude that the grandchildren organize imaginary and symbolic narratives of memory by means of which they figure the traumatic experience of their grandparents. This figuration is not intended to fill the gap in the transmission of traumatic memory, but rather acknowledges the loss and enables an elaboration of the trauma that follows the logic of mourning according to the psychoanalytic perspective, making use of representational mechanisms that take the form of what Hirsch calls post-memorial work.

Keywords : Chilean dictatorship; collective trauma; post-memory; psychoanalysis; reworking of trauma; transgenerational trauma.

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