The Trauma of 1977

Abstract

Over the past few decades, research into the role of memory in processes of identity formation has flourished, and it is commonly accepted now that groups tend to base ‘the consciousness of their unity and their peculiarity on past events’ (Assmann, 1992, p. 132). Similarly, John Gillis maintains that ‘[t]he core meaning of any individual or group identity, namely, a sense of sameness over time and space, is sustained by remembering: and what is remembered is defined by the assumed identity’ (1994, p. 3). In other words, we do not only remember as members of groups, but we also constitute those groups and their collective identities through the very act of remembering (Olick, 2007, p. 29).