Articles

Cultural Trauma: A Problematic of Cultural Sociology
Nicos Demertzis and Victor Roudometof

This article refers to a theoretical concept that is relatively unknown and equally under-appreciated in Greece: the notion of a cultural trauma. Although the term ‘trauma’ is often used in public discourse to designate various individual and collective sufferings, it is rarely clear what is precisely meant by it and what are the dynamics it denotes. The notion of cultural trauma emerged in the context of Jeffrey Alexander’s ‘strong program’ of cultural sociology. Its basic components include the notions of identity, the negative affect and memory. The present article performs a comparison between individual and clinical trauma as well as between collective and cultural trauma. It thus illustrates the convergences among cultural studies, collective memory studies, and the sociology and psychology of emotions.

 

Constructing Trauma and Ethical Constraints:
The Ambiguity of the Holocaust for Israel
Jeffrey C. Alexander and Shai Dromi

This paper reviews the interpretation of the Holocaust within Israeli society ever since the establishment of the state of Israel. It is argued that initially the Holocaust was used in a particularistic way in order to justify the ‘strong’ attitude towards Palestinians and Arabs. Gradually, however, and more particularly after the 1982 invasion of the Lebanon, a more sensitive attitude toward the Palestinian Question had emerged within Israeli public opinion. A new awareness gave rise to a ‘post-Zionist’ discourse crystallized in the 1993 Oslo agreements. Yet after 1995 the Israeli Right managed to contain this narrative by constructing a traumatic experience that bounds the Holocaust suffering within a single social group, thus excluding empathy and compassion for the out-groups.

 

‘1974’ as Cultural Trauma
Victor Roudometof and Miranda Christou

Cyprus’ two communities interpreted the 1974 Turkish invasion differently. In contrast to the Turkish Cypriots, the Greek Cypriot community constructed the invasion as a cultural trauma that left deep scars in memory, society and politics. The traumatic experience was defined by feelings of pain, bitterness and uprooting and by the desire to return to ancestral homes. Even today, these elements are present in Cyprus’ everyday life and are reproduced through government policy, education, and the actions of civil society groups. The year 1974 was used as an interpretative scheme for processing the overnight transformation of Cyprus from an agricultural into an urban society. Transferring the trauma to the post-1974 generations strengthens the sense of trauma and the need for future amelioration. On the basis of this situation, the prospects of a post-traumatic narrative are briefly contemplated.

 

The Greek Civil War as Cultural Trauma
Nicos Demertzis

Based both on desk and field qualitative research, this paper attempts to demonstrate when and how the Greek civil war was instituted as a ‘cultural trauma’. A cultural trauma is not a state of affairs but an open and adversarial process of social negotiation over the meaning, the public representation and memorization of past painful events. These events are given meaning by various agents of the public sphere (intellectuals, career groups, the media etc) viewed by large segments of society or the entire social body as humiliating, inappropriate, and unjust. 

 

The Kosovo Trauma in Serbian National Narratives
Ivana Spasic

This paper examines the different Serb interpretations of the Kosovo trauma from the era of Serb independence to this day. It focuses on the different interpretations that use the legend as a point of origin in order to endow it with political and cultural interpretations that correspond to the needs of each historical period. The crystallization of the myth is coterminous with the process of constituting the modern Serb state. Moreover, special emphasis is placed on the post-1980 interpretations of the myth, and more specifically on the ways in which different political forces have attempted to color it according to their pursuits. The analysis examines the trauma’s signification over the last two decades in direct connection to the political events of this era and highlights the Kosovo myth’s ambiguity in contemporary Serbia as well as its rhetorical employment by political forces.

 

Aspects of Cultural Anti-Americanism in the Postwar Period:
The European Context and the Case of Greece
Zenovia Lialiouti

This article focuses on the cultural dimension of anti-Americanism as developed in post-war Western Europe. It attempts to highlight the historical origins of anti-Americanism in the European continent using the German and the French case as historical examples. It also examines the Greek case focusing on the historical period from the announcement of the Truman Doctrine and the implementation of the Marshall Plan to the mid 1960’s. The broader context in which the present study is inscribed is the relationship between Americanization and anti-Americanism as developed during the Cold War. In particular, Greek cultural anti-Americanism is here examined as a manifestation of the phenomenon of European cultural anti-Americanism that was shaped by American cultural penetration in the continent and by elite and mass reactions to the dominance of the ‘American model’. The Greek case is however different from the western paradigm in the absence of a coherent right-ward anti-American discourse, a difference that can be attributed to the fierce anti-communism of the post-civil war years. However, in the perception of Americanism as a threat by Greek elites and public opinion, we can observe the emergence of an inter-party convergence in the field of anti-Americanism.

 

The Socialistic Origins of X-Liberalism in Greece
George C. Bitros and Anastassios D. Karayiannis

Many of the problems confronting Greece today have their roots in the side effects of the institutional choices and the economic policies that were adopted in the early postwar years. Three persons who influenced these policies decisively were X. Zolotas, C. Tsatsos and P. Papaligouras, whereas the impact of A. Angelopoulos was indirect. In this research we investigate their ideas and recommendations, the policies through which they pursued them, and the adverse consequences on Greek society and economy of the regime that was established, which was typically liberal, but in essence more socialistic. For this reason, our view is that our country shall not manage to get out of its present impasse, unless the so called ‘center-right’ political parties abandon completely the socialistic origins of whatever liberalism (x-liberalism) they are accustomed to invoking in order to justify the social properties of their public choices.

 

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