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This book explores the legacies of suffering in relation to ‘those who come after’ – the descendants of victims, survivors and perpetrators of traumatic events. It draws on recent discussions of ‘postmemory’ and ‘haunting’ that are concerned mainly with the transgenerational impact of personal and social trauma. It examines how we are connected to past events for which we have no direct responsibility yet in which we might in some way be ‘implicated’ and it asks how we might attain a position of active witnessing that helps resolve the suffering of others. Those Who Come After includes vivid accounts of witnessing from a variety of perspectives, ranging from Biblical and Jewish stories to contemporary art and music. The book draws on psychosocial studies and psychoanalysis to help make sense of this material and to develop an understanding of acknowledgment and responsibility that is both ethical and emancipatory. Those Who Come After will be of great interest to readers in psychosocial studies and psychoanalysis and to all who are concerned with the question of how to put past suffering to rest.
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STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOSOCIAL Those Who Come After Postmemory, Acknowledgement and Forgiveness Stephen Frosh Studies in the Psychosocial Series Editors Stephen Frosh Department of Psychosocial Studies Birkbeck, University of London London, UK Peter Redman Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The Open University Milton Keynes, UK Wendy Hollway Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The Open University Milton Keynes, UK Studies in the Psychosocial seeks to investigate the ways in which psychic and social processes demand to be understood as always implicated in each other, as mutually constitutive, co-produced, or abstracted levels of a single dialectical process. As such it can be understood as an interdisciplinary field in search of transdisciplinary objects of knowledge. Studies in the Psychosocial is also distinguished by its emphasis on affect, the irrational and unconscious processes, often, but not necessarily, understood psychoanalytically. Studies in the Psychosocial aims to foster the development of this field by publishing high quality and innovative monographs and edited collections. The series welcomes submissions from a range of theoretical perspectives and disciplinary orientations, including sociology, social and critical psychology, political science, postcolonial studies, feminist studies, queer studies, management and organization studies, cultural and media studies and psychoanalysis. However, in keeping with the inter- or transdisciplinary character of psychosocial analysis, books in the series will generally pass beyond their points of origin to generate concepts, understandings and forms of investigation that are distinctively psychosocial in character. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14464 Stephen Frosh Those Who Come After Postmemory, Acknowledgement and Forgiveness Stephen Frosh Department of Psychosocial Studies Birkbeck, University of London London, UK Studies in the Psychosocial ISBN 978-3-030-14852-2 ISBN 978-3-030-14853-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14853-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general d