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Trauma, Memory and Transformation: Southeast Asian Experiences
Different forms of trauma affect many millions of people. Trauma also helps to shape individual and collective memories.
This innovative book explores how traumatic occurrences and processes are remembered. Using examples from well-known events like the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, the Indian Ocean tsunami in Aceh, and civil conflict in southern Thailand and Aceh, as well as the experiences of ‘comfort women’ in the Philippines, ethnic minority students and interreligious tensions in Malaysia, the contributors examine how people face, survive and make sense of the frictions and violence in their lives.
Embracing history, ethnography, textual analysis, storytelling and art, the multidisciplinary perspective enables a deeper understanding of both traumatic stress and the structures of memory.
Trauma, Memory and Transformation also moves the discussion of traumatic memory away from paralysis and towards transformative action, in the ways that memories of catastrophe can be reimagined as forms of resistance or even peace.
This original book will be essential reading for all those interested in the study of memory in the Southeast Asian context.
This innovative book explores how traumatic occurrences and processes are remembered. Using examples from well-known events like the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, the Indian Ocean tsunami in Aceh, and civil conflict in southern Thailand and Aceh, as well as the experiences of ‘comfort women’ in the Philippines, ethnic minority students and interreligious tensions in Malaysia, the contributors examine how people face, survive and make sense of the frictions and violence in their lives.
Embracing history, ethnography, textual analysis, storytelling and art, the multidisciplinary perspective enables a deeper understanding of both traumatic stress and the structures of memory.
Trauma, Memory and Transformation also moves the discussion of traumatic memory away from paralysis and towards transformative action, in the ways that memories of catastrophe can be reimagined as forms of resistance or even peace.
This original book will be essential reading for all those interested in the study of memory in the Southeast Asian context.
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First published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 31, 2015
An effective collection of essays exploring the different aspects of social/cultural/collective trauma in the context of Southeast Asia. Academic in nature, some of the writing might be difficult to work through, though the points raised are well worth looking at.
I keep going back to Flaudette May V. Datuin's essay, which dissects the boundaries between trauma and memory through the use of art as a method of vocalizing experiences, making the unknown visible (the memories of 'comfort women' in the Philippines, what they endured during the Japanese occupation). Erna Anjarwati's exploration of storytelling among children caught in the conflict between Thai Buddhists and Malay Muslims in southern Thailand strengthens the notion that building narratives and allowing yourselves your own stories can help with navigating traumatic environments. I was grateful for Sharon A. Bong's comparison of white privilege to a contextualized mirror-image, the privilege of Malay-Muslims/Bumiputeras in Malaysia -- a point I had been wishing was articulated somewhere. She goes on to investigate how the forced silencing of dissent ensures a lack of catharsis with (racial) traumas, forming a silently unstable socio-political landscape, relating back to her opening quote, "There is a difference between invisible mending -- fixing something to look as if it has never been torn -- and trying to keep a wound invisible and thereby unavailable for mending" (from Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance by Elizabeth Spelman).
For someone who's new in absorbing the histories and contemporary issues of this region (with a committed interest in the effects on trauma on memory), this book proved to be an essential read -- and the bibliography a treasure trove for further reading.
I keep going back to Flaudette May V. Datuin's essay, which dissects the boundaries between trauma and memory through the use of art as a method of vocalizing experiences, making the unknown visible (the memories of 'comfort women' in the Philippines, what they endured during the Japanese occupation). Erna Anjarwati's exploration of storytelling among children caught in the conflict between Thai Buddhists and Malay Muslims in southern Thailand strengthens the notion that building narratives and allowing yourselves your own stories can help with navigating traumatic environments. I was grateful for Sharon A. Bong's comparison of white privilege to a contextualized mirror-image, the privilege of Malay-Muslims/Bumiputeras in Malaysia -- a point I had been wishing was articulated somewhere. She goes on to investigate how the forced silencing of dissent ensures a lack of catharsis with (racial) traumas, forming a silently unstable socio-political landscape, relating back to her opening quote, "There is a difference between invisible mending -- fixing something to look as if it has never been torn -- and trying to keep a wound invisible and thereby unavailable for mending" (from Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance by Elizabeth Spelman).
For someone who's new in absorbing the histories and contemporary issues of this region (with a committed interest in the effects on trauma on memory), this book proved to be an essential read -- and the bibliography a treasure trove for further reading.
January 4, 2015
A noble and interesting project, but bogged down in academic verbosity.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews