Reflection

By Anonymous
     Time and memory studies are a new addition to my sociological knowledge this semester. I say this with the acknowledgement that many of the themes and difficult questions that I have proposed in my previous blog posts are ones that I have given deep thought outside of the course. At the beginning of the semester, Professor Villegas remarked that time and memory studies are actually more interrelated into our existences than we might believe. To a certain extent, I think he may have even suggested that time, memory and commemoration are central organizing factors of our modern societies (don’t take my word for it!). Frankly, it did not take too long for me to be convinced that time and memory studies are tremendously important for our individual and societal understandings of identity formation. 

    The aspect of trauma which lies amidst memory and commemoration is one that I am all too familiar with given my family’s history of surviving the Salvadoran Civil War. This is why I had already spent dedicated time pondering many of the questions that arose in my blog posts. My proximity to my father’s trauma has placed me in a complicated place in trying to go through my individual trauma process and in establishing a personal priority of memory and commemoration within my life given the family history I have inherited. Perhaps this is why I sub-consciously chose the Ayotzinapa 43, the burning of the Brazil National Museum and the creation of the Sumpul Massacre Memorial Park as my 3 case studies: to continue the investigation into how to establish a trauma, how to process it and how to transmit it across generations. Undoubtedly, the tools of time, trauma and commemoration have affirmed and strengthened my own trauma process within the mixed-status and transnational familial context I am living in. 

    The skills, concepts and frameworks I have learned throughout the course have served to expand my understanding of how commemoration and trauma processes function broadly. The subtleties of memorials and commemorative spaces have become all the clearer with the knowledge I have gained, and this is useful for me to utilize as I navigate across the histories and stories of other groups. I knew before that there is no singular correct way to honor your ancestors and your history, and this course has broadened my appreciation for these varying formats within their own right. 

    Finally, I have found that this course has allowed me to explore presuppositions that I never even considered as questionable before. For example, diving into the question of whether or not we are inside or outside of an event was one of the most eye opening moments for me personally. This question paired with the ideas of generation units and fresh contact challenged my perception of my own proximity to my father’s trauma, and this moment served as a sort of re-centering for myself within my social context (Mannheim 2011). Although the teachings of this course have brought about some difficult questions for me to personally consider, the way I have grown within my trauma process shows the importance of time and memory studies in finding the seeds of hope and healing within one’s community. 

References

Mannheim, Karl. 2011. “From: ‘The Sociological Problem of Generations’.” Pp. 92-98 in The Collective Memory Reader, edited by J.K. Olick, V. Vinitzky-Seroussi, and D. Levy. New York: Oxford University Press.

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