47 TRAUMA

Nena Mocnik

In July 2016, in an abandoned factory occupied by a Dutch battalion during the genocide in the former Yugoslavia, spectators, including locals from Srebrenica and surrounding villages, came to see the performance Srebrena krv (Silver Blood).

Whether in the form of performances, films, or informal educational tools such as video games (contemporary art; gaming), reenactment has become one of the most ubiquitous ways of teaching about traumatic historical events. Reenactments enhance not only cogni­tive explanations of what and how events happened—they also help capture the emotional and somatic understanding of why those events happened. Reenactment has the capacity to translate the intimate, individual experiences of those who have experienced traumatic events and suffer from post-traumatic syndromes into the material and emotional lives of random spectators who have yet to understand and develop compassionate relationships with survivors. Some scholars (Shick, 2011; van der Kolk, 2015) agree that historical reenactment, through collective memory, offers a platform for survivors to confront and relieve the pain that resides in their bodies (body and embodiment). Reenactment creates a form of catharsis in which past atrocities are given narrative closure.

When traumatic events from the past are unresolved, reenactment bears political connota­tions that are often expressed as frustration over the slowness of change (Owen and Ehrenhaus, 2014). At the same time, reenactment can help clarify past events or construct explanations that respond to the current political and ideological needs of those holding the power of cultural memory (production of historical meaning). Opening the wounds of a community’s trauma and acting it out together with or on behalf of the community has the potential to mobilize the audience, educate, and engage them in healing and in constructing a hopeful future. Survivors and victims are easily brought to action, either in the form of offering their testimonies, or in the form of watching as an audience and working as reenactors, especially in cases when justice has not been achieved and reparatory demands have gone unanswered. However, as they are often accorded moral authority, reenactments are often informed by highly personal perspectives that dispense with objective research. Survivors are given the right to evaluate and judge the cor­rectness and appropriation of the events, experiences, and emotions being reenacted. In socie­ties that are still fragile and conflicted, the reenactment script shaped by survivors— those who own the trauma and are thus perceived as the ultimate authorities in creating the (post)trauma narratives—can provoke destructive emotions and negative (re)actions.

If survivors’ memories serve as the only reference point and form of historical evidence for incorporating traumatic experiences into historical reenactment, it can be difficult to provide just and impartial narratives. What a survivor remembers can depend on their current men­tal, emotional, and corporeal state. Real events from the past are recalled through a process of memorizing, organizing, and reconstructing a memory in relation to the present context. Furthermore, accessing coherent and reliable memories of the traumatic event can itself be chal­lenging, because traumatic events often give rise to suppressed, fragmentary forms of memory that resist simple recounting. Many individuals exposed to trauma report that their speech shuts down when trying to describe what has happened to them. Their response to trauma makes it extremely difficult for them to linguistically organize and frame the experience in a suitable nar­rative structure. Memories of traumatic events are stored in the body and mind in fragmented form, with only certain (graphic) images recurring regularly (Herman, 1992). Survivors of such events often report that after a time they can no longer clearly distinguish between their own memories and those reenacted in popular culture (Sturken, 1997). However, even though a traumatic memory may lose its clarity, become distorted or altered, and/or be manipulated over time, at some point, it becomes fixed. After this point, that particular recollection of the event remains unchanged and unquestioned (van der Kolk and van der Hart, 1991). For the survivors, this point represents a moment in time in which the traumatic experience from the past has been “worked through” (Adorno, 2005): the event has been mastered to the extent that it can be set aside, allowing the survivors to move on with their lives. For the audience, this is the point when collective memory enters the historical accounts and receives recognition in public nar­ratives and ideological discourses.

Trauma scholars (Levine, 1992; Rotschild, 2000) have long engaged with the ways in which bodies can communicate and reveal traumatic stories that are otherwise suppressed and difficult to access through language only. Recorded in genetic memory, trauma is thought to be “locked in the body” and hence expressed through emotional responses and bodily sensations (emo­tion), rather than in cognitively organized narratives. If reenactors are not themselves survivors, performing traumatic pasts also means learning about and understanding the sensual, emotional, and physical dimensions of a survivor’s testimony. Therefore, the body may be thought of as pro­viding a form of physical evidence of the event that can be translated into a sensory experience of cognitive understanding and emphatic interaction.

During her workshop Achieving Truth: Creating the Physicality of War on Stage (University of Ottawa, March 16, 2018), Aimee Mica Ntuli shared her experiences as a co-writer and actress in the piece Cheers to Sarajevo (2017) (Figure 47.1). She discussed the preparations actors took to stage a semi-documentary portrayal of the siege of Sarajevo and the fate of a group of friends

Figure 47.1 Cheers to Sarajevo, 2017. Directed by Andrew Roux, written by Aimee Mica Ntuli and Lidija Marelic, produced by Aimee Mica Ntuli. From left to right: Alistair Moulton Black, Rory Acton Burnell, Lamar Bonhomme. Front: Aimee Mica Ntuli. Source: Aimee Mica Ntuli.

from different ethnic backgrounds. She led participants of the workshop, drama students, and other interested individuals through performing-arts exercises, framing them as a way of recreating the physicality and emotions experienced by individuals during the war. At one point, participants were brought into a simulation of a detention camp and subjected to a reenactment of a disturbing interrogation by a camp guard. Everyone was ordered to stand facing the wall with their arms raised above their heads while an actor portraying a camp guard walked behind them with heavy steps and randomly inspected their bodies.

The effects of past events are cumulative and persist in different ways in the behaviors, atti­tudes, and social dynamics of succeeding generations long after the events have occurred. In order to fill in gaps in memory and create coherent narratives, reenactments combine what is “real” with fantasy and the capability of reenactors to empathize and identify with events.

But while reenacting traumatic events can support the healing of psychological and socio­political ruptures in historically damaged and divided communities, the repetitive nature of reenactment can also prevent effective closure and instead perpetuate further violence. On Columbus Day in 1992, the US Congress organized a Quincentennial Jubilee, which was to include a reenactment of the “discovery of America.” The state's insistence on celebrating the conquest despite loud calls for an acknowledgment of the genocide perpetrated on indig­enous peoples gave rise to a “Resistance 500” task force, which ultimately succeeded in having the controversial event canceled. Ever since, celebrations of Columbus's expedition have been criticized as historical misrepresentations and denials of the crimes committed against indig­enous people in both Americas (Hochbruck, 1993). The attempt to reenact the complexity of collective violence, its consequences, and the individual accounts of survivors and perpetra­tors can also run the risk of over-simplifying the events or creating positive/negative binaries where audiences empathize only with some individuals or social groups while demonizing the “Other.” For instance, in his writings on the annual reenactments of remembered histories in Japan, Tatsushi Arai (2015, p. 23) makes the point that the Japanese public and policymakers must acknowledge the Korean, Chinese, and other Asian nations' lived and remembered histories of Japanese colonial rule. He argues that only by acknowledging diverse yet contested narratives might reconciliation be achieved.

Ignoring the memories of a traumatized community can lead to a failure to address the need for restorative justice. In this sense, historical trauma in new, disguised forms becomes a real-life reenactment, namely not as a staged, mediated, and intentionally prepared performance for the audience, but rather an intrinsic and subconscious response to triggers. As opposed to other cases in this text, victims in this context are real and living people in this very moment, not reenacting victims who are not present yet or passed away a long time ago.

The sense of being mistreated is transferred through generations and the continuity of the catastrophe becomes repeated on an institutional level; a deliberately chosen traumatic event can become an integral part of a group's identity, helping them to regain power and a sense of control over the past and present (Herman, 1992;Volkan, 2004). Howard Stein (2014) takes as an example non-Israeli Jews' relationship to contemporary violence between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. He argues that the current violence might, to some certain extent, be a reenactment of historical traumas on both sides, and both on the interpersonal and social levels. The “Holocaust industry,” he writes, is based on continuous and ritualized repetitions of specific and chosen memories that have successfully been transferred through generations. These repetitions have created a vicious cycle of perpetuating the fear of a never-ending threat to the present and future. Because this narrative is deeply embedded in Jewish cultural memory, the reenactment of trauma is usually unconscious and has hence become one of the major sources of present-day violence. When the motivation for reenacting historical trauma lies in individuals who are held hostage to the legacies of traumas rooted in past injustice, both reenactors and witnesses end up witnessing just another repetition of the eternal pain instead of participating in healing and restorative justice.

Therefore, reenactors of historical trauma must be cautious about how to ensure that active remembrance operates as a form of resistance against political denial and systematic forgetting (indigeneity). By acknowledging those who have been hurt, reenactment often emphasizes accountability and nurtures the process of forgiveness, which can become a legitimate form of restorative justice. Theater in post-genocide Rwanda has become one of the most influential spaces for perpetrators and survivors to meet and forge new relationships. Ananda Breed (2008, p. 46) describes the powerful role of “reconciliation plays” in this context. One performance, Duharanire Kunga Izatanye (Let's Try Our Best to Unite Those Who Are Divided), stages a mar­riage between a Hutu and a Tutsi; during the reconciliation scenes between opposing families, the audience responds with cheers, cries of approval, and humor. Ideally, reenactments utilize Representations that deal with the past in ways that allow divided societies to move into the future. Witnessing the reenactment of traumatic events might, in the best-case scenario, foster sufficient moral courage among people to transform trauma and break the cycle of hostile emo­tions like rage, anger, fear, and frustration. Working through these emotions is fundamental for any recovery and for ushering in processes of reparation and reconciliation.

Further reading

Levine, P., 1992; Rothschild, B., 2000; Shick, K., 2011; van der Kolk, B. A., 2015.