163 7 1974 and Greek Cypriot Identity The Division of Cyprus as Cultural Trauma Victor Roudometof and Miranda Christou e interdisciplinary surge of interest in memory studies has been fueled both by events that have generated a “commemorative fever” in the 1980s and 1990s and by the booming of cultural artifacts (film, photography, internet media, artificial memory storage) that facilitate the collective processes of bringing the past into the present (Misztal 2003). While, in the past, nation-states sought to monumentalize national history, today, we witness a fascination with the processes of remembering and forgetting. e utopian visions of the future dominant in the first half of the twentieth century have been replaced by the appeal of the past and a “hypertrophy of memory” (Huyssen 2003). Cultural trauma theory provides one of the most important sociological perspectives that help us capture this trend and analyze its repercussions for social life (for an overview, see Roudometof 2007). Eyerman et al.indb 163 Eyerman et al.indb 163 3/3/11 4:38:56 PM 3/3/11 4:38:56 PM