Theorising intergenerational trauma through the prism of history-in-the-now: historical consciousness, the sense-making process and its potentials for self-transformation

This article theorises the relationship between intergenerational trauma and historical consciousness, seeking to understand how negatively impregnated experiences of traumatising events that people inherit and interiorise can be actualised in their sense-making as a form of possibility for renewal and strength. Such an examination, which investigates how inheritors of collective trauma view history’s workings and how these understandings shape their social positioning, can provide much-needed insight into the historical knowledge that inheritors bring to formal history classrooms and the different strategies that can be adopted to help them (and others) overcome these traumatic events’ negative imposition on their self-identity and ability to act positively in the world. The article particularly focuses on the notion of inheritors’ transgenerational atmosphere that holds them captive to the limiting experiences of their predecessors’ lived horrors, as they relate to the concept of history-in-the-now, which offers a novel way of grasping the workings of historical consciousness. Moreover, the author’s broader practical life methodology is introduced as a pedagogical approach to helping inheritors – as learners – develop a positive, secure and grounded self-understanding. In emphasising inheritors’ inner expansion, the approach involves the promotion of self-reflexive mindsets through investigating the histories and epistemologies that inheritors are socialised in and the conceptual resources they employ for constructing their understandings of reality. Such attention is meant to provide insight into the structure, function and outcome of inheritors’ sense-making and the working principles that orient their actions when using the historical knowledge they possess.