Like daughter, like grandson: Queering post-traumatic memory

Abstract

Queer and trauma theory both concern internal experiences that challenge normative social frameworks. Considering the roles of queerness within trauma and memory studies opens interpretive pathways for otherwise discredited or inaccessible meanings. It also relates survivors’ receding knowledge to those currently “queered” or endangered. With a focus on childhood and mother-child relationships, this article maps intersections of memory studies, queer theory, and trauma theory, applying subsequent insights to an “autotheoretical” analysis of the author’s own transnational, post-Holocaust family across four generations. It explores the possibility through queer studies of excavating new post-traumatic meanings and relating those meanings to present contexts.

Collective memory and trans history in the Italian context: Archival practices and the creation of the first trans archive in Italy

“…The activists’ collection of articles concerning trans experiences in the Italian context of the time was not a simple act of retrieving information about the trans presence in the public sphere and in public opinion; it represented a counter-narrative and a reinterpretation of the world from a trans point of view, that is, a reappropriation of the narration by adopting the viewpoint of trans people (Cvetkovich, 2003). This gesture represents in itself ‘a queer lens focuses on subversive social critique and the preservation of endangered (inter)subjectivity’ (Moskowitz, 2021: 2).…”

“…This methodology has made it possible to question the ‘normative language’ (Moskowitz, 2021) and standardised approach to the life course interview in the humanities and social sciences, in which information about the witnesses’ lives is elicited by the interviewer according to a chronological progression. Trans experiences and trans studies have highlighted the normativity of this method (long used in the medical-scientific environment to define and analyse trans experiences from a pathological perspective), which is incapable of capturing the non-linear and non-standardised temporality of trans lives and memories (Chen and cárdenas, 2019).…”

Queering memory: Toward re-membering otherwise

“…Meanwhile, Ann Cvetkovich’s (2003) groundbreaking work on sexual trauma brought together queer theory and affect theory to highlight how broader socio-political structures inform emotional experiences of sexual trauma, charting the ways for personal and political transformation. A growing body of feminist and queer scholarship has begun to engage in theorizations of queer memory, particularly in relation to generations and temporality (Moskowitz, 2021) and possibilities of dismantling heteronormative family structures (Dragojlovic, 2018). In this sense, queering memory allows for an analysis of the ways in which memory, gender, and sexuality are intertwined and co-constituted.…”

Memory care and queer akinship at the former Uckermark concentration camp for girls and young women

“… 21. Since its initial formulation, postmemory has been extended and widely adapted, beyond the Holocaust context, to other traumas, and broadened from within the family frame to a wider generational context, including for understanding the affective inheritances of the descendants of perpetrators (Berberich, 2011; Hirsch, 2008: 105; Stafford, 2013). More recent is work on the queering of postmemory (Çalışkan, 2019; Moskowitz, 2021). …”