Memories of War and the COVID-19 Crisis in Spain
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Memories of War and the COVID‑19 Crisis in Spain Ana Belén Martínez García1 Received: 1 July 2020 / Revised: 22 August 2020 / Accepted: 1 October 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Spaniards born in a democracy have no recollection of living through war and what it entails. We can only access those memories via mediation, by listening to our relatives who were there, whose stories we become witnesses to, and which ultimately become our own collective witnessing. The remembrance of the Spanish Civil War passed on to us in this manner is a contested legacy, a complex combination of affects and mediated memories, coming from offline—as in conversations with our elders—and online—such as archival footage—resources. Experiencing war firsthand left indelible marks in our forebearers’ minds. Now the elderly must face this violent “war” and “postwar” rhetoric with the potential retraumatization it may cause. Not capable to understand why media and government officials alike call for heroes to resist and fight the crisis, a discourse heavily imbued with emotions and battlefront references does little to assuage citizens’ fears. Perpetual news reels on the number of dead per day worsen the psychological strain of a person in lockdown, akin to that of prison inmates, more so if that person endured an actual war and its aftermath. What might be done to lessen such harmful impacts? How can we change the narrative and make it more humane? Keywords Collective witnessing · Spanish civil war · Traumatic memories · Discursive frames · Crisis narrative · Emotions
Introduction This article draws on Paul John Eakin’s definition of narrative identity and how we are “Storied Selves” (Eakin, 1999, p. 99) whose identity is constructed through “Self-narration”: “narrative is not something we tell, listen to, read, or invent; it is an essential part of who we are” (2008, p. ix). Furthermore, our lives are “relational” (1999, p. 43), meaning our identity is never only a matter of the individual but it is also collaboratively produced. Research in autobiography or life writing/life narrative, as broader umbrella terms, demonstrates those core tenets, inextricably linked to theories of emotions, sociology, psychology, and narrative. * Ana Belén Martínez García [email protected] 1
Department of Communication At ISSA, School of Management Assistants, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
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How traumatic experiences and violence of various kinds are negotiated via testimonial life narrative is the subject of notable scholarly works. Among those, one may count, for instance, Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith’s (2004) Human Rights and Narrated Lives: the Ethics of Recognition. In this seminal work, Schaffer and Smith discuss manifold case studies from across the globe where violence and life narrative intersect, the frames and templates that testimonial texts draw from, and the potential and pitfalls of rights discourse. Importantly, they address the relationship between memory and witnessing: T
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