Abduction and Narcotisation. Notes on Difficult Family Memory

This paper seeks to provide an analysis of an excerpt from an interview (conducted by the cognitive psychologist Dr. Aline Cordonnier) with a 60-year-old Belgian woman whose father was (probably) a collaborator with the Germans during the Second World War. The article aims to investigate a set of specific issues relating to the woman as an implicated subject (because of the family bond), and how themes related to this difficult history are mediated through the lens of the family, proposing, therefore, an abductive reasoning that speaks of her own implication and what has been silenced in the family history. The analysis of specific segments of the interview will employ tools from Umberto Eco’s interpretative semiotics, taking into account, in particular, the concepts of “abduction” and “narcotisation”.