La memoria delle catastrofi nei processi di ripartenza. Una conversazione

Events, which like bombardments, massacres as well as “natural” disasters provoke the sudden, often unexpected destruction of living conditions for individuals and communities, are traumatic experiences whose effects can last for generations. Both the memory and the history of such traumatic experiences in 20th century’s Europe – bombardments during WWII and earthquakes until the 1980s – how they were perceived by the affected people and the reactions they unleashed are the subject of Gabriella Gribaudi’s recent study, La memoria, i traumi, la storia. La guerra e le catastrofi del Novecento (Viella 2020). How to resume after having lost everything, what individual and collective strategies do people adopt to create a new context of ordinary daily life, how to manage the tension between the wish to recreate the lost conditions and the need to shape a new prospect of life are the questions discussed with the author in the following interview.