Trauma, Storytelling, and Collective Memory: A Subject Review

Abstract

This subject review examines the evolving relationship between trauma, storytelling, and collective memory within contemporary literary criticism, medical humanities, psychology, and cultural studies. The study explores how narrative functions as a means of witnessing, survival, resistance, and emotional recovery in contexts shaped by war, exile, migration, illness, violence, and displacement. Drawing upon the theoretical contributions of scholars such as Cathy Caruth, Dominick LaCapra, Dori Laub, Judith Herman, and Bessel van der Kolk, the review discusses the fragmented nature of traumatic memory and its representation through silence, repetition, symbolism, and disrupted narrative structures. The article further investigates storytelling as an ethical and communal practice that enables testimony, ritual mourning, identity reconstruction, and collective remembrance. Particular attention is given to recent interdisciplinary developments in trauma studies, including narrative medicine, ritual healing, refugee literature, postcolonial trauma, digital memory, and artificial intelligence. Through discussions of selected contemporary studies such as The Corpse Washer, The Arbaeen Pilgrimage as Unintended Drama Therapy, The Physician as Storyteller, Prescription for Humanity, and Hamlet Rewired, the review demonstrates how storytelling continues to preserve human dignity and cultural continuity in traumatic circumstances. The paper concludes that contemporary trauma studies increasingly emphasize resilience, ethical listening, and communal healing, while storytelling remains central to understanding pain, memory, identity, and survival in both personal and collective contexts.