Transposition, generationality, and trauma: From psychoanalytic Holocaust studies to post-mnemonic cultures

Abstract The concept of transposition, initially linked to the study of affective transmission of trauma across generations, has not progressed far beyond psychoanalytic Holocaust studies, and its broader cultural implications remain underexplored. Through its presentation and appraisal, I make an argument for the critical and epistemic potential of transposition, both recognizing and moving beyond the specific framework of its original articulation, namely the clinical psychoanalytic work with children of Holocaust survivors in the 1970s and 1980s. First, I outline the trajectories of the emergence of the concept, focussing on the work of Judith Kestenberg. I contextualize transposition in relation to the psychoanalytic nexus of trauma and mourning, particularly regarding the effects of what Alexander Mitscherlich and Marguerite Mitscherlich called “the inability to mourn”. I then discuss how, while contemporary trauma discourses have paid little attention to transposition, this concept has been revived in studies of postmemory. Through a close reading of the novel The White Book by contemporary South Korean writer Han Kang, I conclude that the shift of transposition from a clinical notion to a cultural and literary idiom of cross-generational mnemonic legacies marks a significant discursive change, and it paves the way for a broader interrogation of the psychosocial costs of traumatic remembrance.