Abstract
Since the 1990s, scholarly attention within the humanities and social sciences has converged on aspects of trauma and its aftermath, especially the effect of trauma on personal and cultural formations of identity (Herman, 1992; Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Van der Kolk, McFarland and Weisaeth, 1996; Garland, 1998; La Capra, 2001; Brenner, 2004). Stories told in the direct voice of those who have actually endured trauma and its aftermath can provide unique insight into the quality of these ordeals and the processes by which they are experienced, mediated, constructed and transcended. As much as stories of trauma can be riveting, as researchers we are specifically interested in how sense is made of trauma and how we engage with such information. This chapter traces the practices of researchers to understand how resilience to trauma is communicated, utilizing a collaborative team approach that we believe is distinctive and also duplicable for other groups to study, by looking here at the deepened life histories of Holocaust survivors and their family members.
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© 2015 Hannah Kliger and Sheryl Perlmutter Bowen
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Kliger, H., Bowen, S.P. (2015). Dignity and Defiance: The Resilience to Repair and Rebuild in Response to Despair. In: Mitroiu, S. (eds) Life Writing and Politics of Memory in Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137485526_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137485526_6
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