From cellular memory to the memory of trauma: Social epigenetics and its public circulation

Trauma is associated with the appearance of the concept of ‘accident’ as a social and legal entity, as well as with the successive discoveries of surgery, psychiatrics, and psychoanalysis. Today, epigenetics has redefined trauma as an extreme form of social adversity. Because of the exceptional nature of the events studied and also the social and political significance of its results, the social epigenetics of historical trauma has received...