Collective memory and psychosocial trauma: New conceptualizations, new tensions from Latin America

Abstract

Research on collective memory has revealed its importance to the identity persons and groups. In the Southern Cone of Latin America, this field of research has focused on the relation between traumatic experiences stemming from wars, dictatorships, or armed internal conflicts, and the activation of collective memory processes. This article presents a critical review of several fields of inquiry that have explored the tensions involving collective memory and trauma associated with political violence, and which provide evidence for the impact of traumatic events on memory processes. The article addresses new lines of research that illustrate the growing complexity of the scene of the traumatic and the challenges that this densification entails for labors of memory in contexts of rapid social and political changes.