Transmission, writing and fiction: from memory work to the construction of new collective identities

Abstract

The aim of this study is to contribute to the reflection on the ways in which the social memory of traumatic events related to political violence is processed between generations. This problem is currently being examined from different disciplinary perspectives. The present study concentrates on the contributions derived from psychoanalytic research on the transmission of psychic life, and on the contributions of studies on social memory. Moreover, it explores researches on literary creations that question the recent past. It is hypothesized that the work of memory promoted by these artistic productions integrates a use of fiction with a political and transforming character, which goes beyond testimony and questions the identity and ethical underpinnings of generations. The main conclusions of the research highlight the importance of the idea of anteriority over the idea of interiority as the basis of identity work and the idea of generational space, as an area of transmission and construction of shared meanings, which mobilizes various resources and modes of elaboration.