Episode 28: Intergenerational Memory: Revival of Trauma, Dersim Massacre, COVID-19 Pandemic

Posted Date: June 14, 2021

Episode Description:

In this episode, LAC member Müge Gedik interviews Berfin Çiçek, a graduate student in Cultural Studies at Sabancı University in Turkey. They discuss Berfin’s project on the revival of trauma and intergenerational memory catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Berfin takes the testimony of a member from the descendent generation of Dersim massacre victims from Turkey, his grandfather, into the focus of her project while exploring how traumatic experiences trigger each other and create an intergenerational memory in general, and more specifically, during the COVID-19 quarantine. Berfin considers testimonials as crucial evidence and attributes to established theories, mostly by Cathy Caruth and Dori Laub.

Guest Biography

Berfin Çiçek is a graduate student in Cultural Studies at Sabanci University. She works at Sabancı University Women’s and Gender Studies Research Center. She wrote an Honors thesis titled “Telling the Memories of a Massacre: Trauma and Testimony from Dersim’s 38” which was accepted to be presented at conferences at the State University of New York and Princeton University. She also published critical writing at Brio Literary Journal of New York University. She presented at the British Association for Holocaust Studies’ online workshop. She is going to present her upcoming work at Turkologentag 2021 “The Fourth Convention of Turkic, Ottoman and Turkish Studies” and American Comparative Literature Association 2021 Annual Meeting. She reads Turkish, Zazaki, English, German, and French, and Persian. At the moment, her research focus is literary modernism in Iranian Literature and Iranian women’s writings.

Project Abstract

This talk is projected to understand how the contemporary COVID-19 pandemic affected people with traumatic pasts. In order to figure out in what ways the contemporary pandemic revives people’s traumas, especially those who are above 65 years old and have to be quarantined according to the law, this study evaluates the testimony of a member from the descendent generation of Dersim massacre victims from Turkey. The aim of the talk is to present examples of how the traumatic experiences trigger each other, thus leaving the marks of the trauma on the memory of the generations. The testimony of an 82-year-old man was not planned, rather it was a result of his distracted everyday reality because of the long quarantine that he had to obey due to his age and legal rules. The outline of the talk is to firstly mention the brief history of Dersim massacre that took place in Turkey in 1938. Secondly, the relationship between memory and trauma will be discussed in terms of how the traumatic experience shapes what the victims remember and how they tend to testify their experience. In that sense, a close reading of the testimonials is necessary. This research attributes to the established theories by Cathy Caruth and Dori Laub. During the podcast talk, the topics to be discussed will include traumatic experiences such as massacres and their effects on everyday life, the extent of the revival of these experiences as a result of the long-time quarantine experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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