Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma and Collective Memory in Second Generation Cambodian American Refugees

• In Event: 392 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. The Politics of Erasing Violence

Abstract

The developing field of trauma studies centers mainly on medicine and psychology, disciplines that tend to focus on manifestations of trauma in the individual psyche and/or within the bounded body. While mental health, as understood by medical and psychological practitioners, is crucial and necessary for people dealing with symptoms of trauma, there must be a critical and complex social engagement with the measurement and diagnosis of trauma-based mental health “disorders” that go beyond the confines of the individual body into that of the collective and social body. Although there have been some research on the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder and somatic diseases among first generation Cambodian Americans, there is a lack of data on the lingering mental and physical effects of trauma and memory on subsequent generations. Using ethnographic data, this presentation will address some of the ways in which transgenerational trauma manifests in 1.5 and second generation Cambodian Americans—particularly those who did not physically experience or do not even know about war and genocide but yet still feel the effects of their family’s muddled and traumatic pasts. By looking at how communities, as social collectives, are traumatized and how people in such communities respond to traumas, this study helps explain how collective memory is mediated through social or familial ties. The trauma of war or genocide does not disappear with the death of survivors; instead, the memory remains in the narratives of capitalism and militarism.

Author

• Yvonne Y. Kwan, University of California-Santa Cruz