ABOUT THE PROJECT

Bodies have a history and a memory. They bear traces of violence, racism, and antisemitism, even where conscious recollection has faded or where experiences have been silenced, displaced, or repressed. In this sense, the body can be understood as a historical archive: a living repository that testifies not only to past injuries, but also to the enduring forms of injustice that emerge from them in the present.

Yet how does the body remember experiences of extreme violence that have shaped and historically formed it? How can bodily memory be articulated, deciphered, and interpreted? To address these questions within the social sciences, this project engages with medical and neuroscientific research. In particular, studies on the transgenerational and epigenetic effects of trauma offer nuanced accounts of how historical violence is translated into somatic, epigenetic signatures and how traumatic events may alter mechanisms of genetic transcription across generations.

The research project Somatic Memory of Historical Violence. Transgenerational Epigenetics of Trauma, Antisemitism, and Racism (Trans-somatic) investigates how traumatic experiences grounded in antisemitism and racism leave physical traces that can persist and be transmitted over time. Biomedical research—such as studies on the long-term consequences of the Holocaust, genocidal violence, or everyday racist discrimination—is critically examined from the perspectives of history and the social sciences. The questions guiding this inquiry are: To what extent does medical and neuroscientific research open up new perspectives on the body’s history of violence? Do the cross-references between different groups of victims, particularly within epigenetic trauma research, enable a form of of multidirectional somatic memory rather than reinforcing modes of competition between victimized groups? And conversely, to what extent do biomedical frameworks risk reproducing essentialist or biologistic conceptions of victim groups and racialization?

The project approaches the epigenetics of trauma as a history of the body. It mobilizes biomedical studies to develop new concepts and methodological tools for analyzing bodily memory within the social sciences. At the same time, it examines how medical knowledge feeds into social and political debates concerning racism and antisemitism, the Holocaust, genocide, and colonial violence. A further focus lies on assessing both the analytical potential and the epistemic risks involved in employing genetic and epigenetic knowledge in the study of racism and antisemitism.

To pursue these aims, the project is structured around four interrelated analytical perspectives and corresponding lines of inquiry: 1) a history of science that traces the transitions and continuities between eugenics, genetics, and epigenetics; 2) a historical discourse analysis of transgenerational trauma research on antisemitism in relation to other forms of racism; 3) a medical-anthropological approach that differentiates and interprets epigenetic mechanisms as forms of somatic memory; and 4) a theory-political and self-reflexive engagement with physiological approaches to race, racism, and antisemitism.

Covering a historical time frame from contemporary history to the present, the project draws primarily on bodies of knowledge from Germany, the United States, and Israel. Its interdisciplinary framework moves between the history of science and medical anthropology, medicine and epigenetics, Holocaust and trauma studies, research on antisemitism and racism, and critical race theory. Through this constellation, the project seeks to rethink bodily memory not as a deterministic imprint of the past, but as a historically situated and politically contested field of knowledge.

1) HISTORY OF SCIENCE

This dimension examines the historical foundations of contemporary epigenetic trauma research. It focuses on continuities and shifts between eugenics, genetics, and epigenetics, and asks within which conceptual frameworks current understandings of heredity, environment, and the body are embedded. Looking at the German-speaking context, it analyzes how scientific models of biological difference and social order have changed—and to what extent earlier assumptions continue to shape present-day research. In this way, the history-of-science perspective opens up a critical view of the knowledge traditions through which the body has come to be understood as a bearer of history.

2) DISCOURSE HISTORY

This line of inquiry explores how research on transgenerational trauma and epigenetics is discussed, translated, and politically mobilized by different affected groups across diverse contexts. It examines how connections between various histories of violence—such as antisemitism, racism, the Holocaust, genocide, or colonial violence—are established and what role scientific interpretations play in this process. The focus lies on how such connections shape social negotiations around memory, recognition, responsibility, and reparations. In this way, the discourse-historical perspective highlights how knowledge about trauma and the body circulates between science, the public sphere, and politics, enabling different groups to enter into relation with one another.

3) MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

This dimension approaches research on the epigenetic effects of trauma as a field in which perspectives on biological processes and social experience intersect. It asks how violence becomes effective at the level of the body and what forms of “memory” may emerge in this context. Particular attention is paid to the interplay between biological mechanisms, social relations, and cultural contexts. The aim is to develop concepts and tools for a history of the body that allow for a nuanced analysis of somatic memory—without reducing it to either purely biological or purely social explanations.

4) POLITICAL THEORY

Thie theory-political perspective reflects on the project’s central concepts and assumptions from a theory-political perspective. It examines how categories such as trauma, victimhood, and bodily memory have emerged historically and how they structure social and political interpretations today. At the same time, it considers the possibilities and limits of conceptualizing violence and its effects in material and bodily terms. At its core lies the challenge of developing new perspectives on the body and history without reproducing existing forms of essentialism or inequality. In doing so, this dimension provides a critical framework for linking biomedical knowledge with social and political analysis.