Family Memories, Postmemory, and the Rupture of Tradition in Josefina Aldecoa’s Civil War Trilogy

Abstract

This article explores issues of memory, postmemory, and trauma in the domain of the family via close textual analysis of Josefina Aldecoa's Civil War trilogy, Historia de una maestra, Mujeres de negro, and La fuerza del destino. These novels draw an allegorical parallel between the family and the nation in order to chart the intergenerational transmission of trauma and its overcoming. They thus reveal the importance of Aldecoa's contribution not only to Spain's contemporary memory debates, but also to the broader concerns of theories of cultural memory, postmemory, and the coding of historical experience as trauma.

Transmisión transgeneracional de la memoria del franquismo: el vídeo doméstico como documento en 'Haciendo memoria' (2005) de Sandra Ruesga

“…A partir del nuevo milenio la teoría de la posmemoria ha sido aplicada al estudio de obras literarias y fílmicas españolas que reconstruyen el pasado de la guerra civil y la dictadura desde la perspectiva de los hijos y nietos de la guerra (Portela 2007;Ryan 2010;Ramblado 2011;Ribeiro 2012;Quílez 2013;Quílez y Rueda Laffond 2017). 1 Tenemos un corpus de documentales españoles de la posmemoria que comparten con algunas piezas 1 Hirsch ha señalado que su estudio de la posmemoria está en diálogo con otros contextos de transmisión traumática como la esclavitud americana, la guerra de Vietnam, la guerra sucia en Argentina o las dictaduras de América Latina (Hirsch, 2015: 38).…”

The Memory of the Civil War in Algeria: Lessons from the Past with Reference to the Algerian Hirak

“…All the social strata participated in the demonstrations. Moreover, similar claims contradict the studies arguing that the consequences of traumatic events are not limited to the persons immediately exposed to the event or studies, emphasizing that families have a deep role in creating the post-event memories (Adonis, 2015;Assmann, 2006;Danieli, 1998;De Menezes, 2012;Feutchtwang, 2005;Fromm, 2012;Hirsch, 1997Hirsch, , 2008.…”

Remembering the 1998 Indonesian Sorcerers Massacre: Memory of Tragedy and Trauma in Intan Andaru’s Perempuan Bersampur Merah (Woman in Red Scarf)

“…This theory is called post-memory (postmemory). Post-memory is used by Hirsch as a theoretical framework that describes the relationship between generations who have experienced personal, collective, and cultural trauma directly and the generations after them (Bezo & Maggi, 2015;De Menezes, 2012;Hirsch, 2012). The next generation who did not directly experience these events entered into traumatic experiences that occurred in the previous generation through stories, pictures, and various other cultural products (Miklavcic, 2008).…”