ABSTRACT
On the basis of the ethnographic evidence and her own pedagogical practice, the author emphasizes the importance of moving away from the prevailing therapeutic and clinical understanding of trauma. That one might be transmitting trauma to future generations could be interpreted by survivors as a lack of control over their own trauma and/or their failure to heal from it or successfully cope with it. She proposes that more work with the traumatic legacy of women survivors of war rape should be done, such as learning about power structures of cultural patterns, inflicted primarily by society. These patterns, deeply embedded, usually unquestioned and normalized within our society should therefore expand the current (pre)occupation with the effects of trauma transmission and collective memory in helping us to understand the cultural, social and political (ab)uses of gender and sexuality as a historical continuum.
