Fotografare l’indicibile: memorie traumatiche e transgenerazionali

Individual trauma response involves individual processing and, if ineffective, will transmit unprocessed fragments to subsequent generations. These memories are characterized by fragmentation and sensorial support to avoid suffering and emotional overwhelm. The generational transitions entail the unnameability (I), unspeakability (II), and unthinkability (III) of the traumatic event or atmosphere that generated post-traumatic stress in the first generation, then passed on to the next indirectly and defensively. The unspeakable has different times and languages. The traumatic experience entails an inability to access the symbolic (e.g., language, images) and the perception of temporality: past and present can be contemporaneous and overlapping in the re-enactment of post-traumatic symptoms. Images, as visual memories, can dissolve the traumatic loneliness, reconnect memories, allowing their realistic transmission across generations and beyond family history.