In The Making of White American Identity, Ron Eyerman provides an explanation for how whiteness has become a basis for collective identification and collective action in the United States. Drawing upon his previous work on the formation of African American Identity, as well as cultural trauma theory, collective memory, and social movements, Eyerman reveals how and under what conditions such a collective identification emerges, how collective action around an ideology of whiteness and white superiority happens, and considers the prospects of the ideology of white supremacy as a political force in the United States.
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1: Introduction: Identity, Memory, and Trauma -- 2: The Past in the Present: Culture and the Transmission of Memory -- 3: Intellectuals and Cultural Trauma -- 4: The Assassination of Harvey Milk -- 5: Social Theory and Cultural Trauma -- 6: The Worst Was the Silence: The Unfinished Drama of the Katyn Massacre -- 7: Cultural Trauma, Collective Memory and the Vietnam War -- 8: Perpetrator Trauma and Collective Guilt -- 9. Conclusion: Ron Eyerman and the Study of Cultural Trauma
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Developing the theory of cultural trauma in regard to the shattering potential effects of political assassinations, Eyerman examines political and social life in three different national contexts: Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and Harvey Milk in the U.S.; Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands; and Olof Palme and Anna Lindh in Sweden.
Applying Jurgen Habermas' distinction between the three knowledge interests guiding scientific research, this article identifies three approaches to 'trauma', a clinical approach, rooted in a medical model, a literary approach, rootedin psychoanalysis, and a cultural sociological approach. After elaborating on each of these perspectives, and the various forms through which trauma is represented aesthetically, the three are applied in an analysis of the film "QuoVadis, Aida?". It is argued that although they entail different notions of trauma, the three are not mutually exclusive and can be combined in a rich understanding of aesthetic representation.
This article sets out to explain why after the 1978 assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk, it is the latter who has achieved world recognition. At the time of their assassination Moscone was the more well-known figure, an American politician with a national reputation. The theories of social drama and cultural trauma are applied in this explanatory process. These theories provide a framework for analyzing how this incident became a significant event locally and nationally. The fact that Milk was one of the first openly gay people to hold public office in the United States meant that his life and death would have significance for a wide group of people. Individuals and organizations associated with gay liberation became carrier groups which created the Harvey Milk story and how it was told. Such carrier groups saw to it that Milk was remembered, and remembered in a particular way.
As opposed to the intelligentsia, a historically specific group, and the professions, those who perform intellectual labor, the intellectual is here understood as the performance of a social role, one which involves the articulation of ideas communicated to a broad audience. This implies at least two distinct ways of speaking about and studying the intellectual. The first is to look at the way various social actors take on the task of articulating ideas in public discourses. The second is to study how particular persons aspire to the intellectual, a role whose meaning they inherit as part of a tradition which must be interpreted and reinvented. Through an analysis of six assassinations, the article shows how intellectuals can act as carrier groups in what is called a cultural trauma, a public discourse in which the foundations of collective identity are brought up for reflection. The six assassinations are Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in the United States, Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands and Olof Palme and Anna Lindh in Sweden. The article concludes with reflections on the changing nature and position of the intellectual in contemporary society, especially in the light of the prevalence of the media and the new digital age.
