Verbalizing Trauma: Their Truth of the 'Revival Process': The Case of Bulgarian Muslim Community

• In Event: Globalization and the Modern Bulgarian Nation-State

Abstract

The paper investigates the nuances and complex realm of how the victims of the Bulgarian Muslim community (Pomaks) verbalize their traumatic experience of the renaming process and the actions of the communist party in Bulgaria (1971- 1974) about the so-called “Revival process” – to name only a few, actions of violation towards women and children from the members of the police authorities (People’s Militia of Republic of Bulgaria), judicial prosecutions, family expulsions, individuals expel from their homes, etc. Analyzing more than 20 interviews of victims from the Eastern Rhodope region, the study investigates how the victims navigate the traumatic events and their emotional upheavals into coherent verbal expressions using various metaphors and code language in their stories. A comprehensive discourse analysis is made on the interviewee's linguistic expressions in shaping and reshaping traumatic memories as a strategy to illustrate the interplay between linguistic articulation and the construction of the speaker’s identity. The hypothesis that people had created an alternative code to the official power discourse will be explored further in the study.

Author

• Senem Konedareva, American U Bulgaria (Bulgaria)