Long‐Term Memory Of Extreme Events: From Autobiography To History

Abstract

The article analyses narratives of massacres by German troops in two villages in Tuscany during the Second World War. It explores the mechanisms of construction of group memory, considering the recollections from the perspective of both their social patterning and their emotional quality. Working from Bloch's assertion that there is no difference between the representations of autobiographical memory and those of historical accounts, I argue that visual imagery associated with past traumatic experience is a fundamental part of oral narratives, and facilitates the passage from personal to public memories. Treating the memory as a form of intersubjective knowledge endowed with symbolic content, rather than as a unanimous, collective endeavour, I argue for an approach that integrates different disciplinary theories.