Unfinished Mourning: The Historical Formation of Alevi Collective Memory

This study examines the emotional architecture of Alevi collective memory through the concept of unfinished mourning, adopting a phenomenological perspective. The research draws on in-depth interviews with twenty participants from diverse regional and generational backgrounds across Turkey. The findings indicate that in the intergenerational transmission of historical traumas, unfinished mourning functions as a structural emotional formation rather than a pathological condition. While the older generation articulates feelings of loss and injustice through memories grounded in direct experience, the younger generation internalizes these effects through familial narratives, embodied practices, and the broader social atmosphere. The inability to complete mourning practices rooted in the absence of legal accountability and societal recognition generates a formation of unfinished mourning at the collective level. Female participants assume a carrier role in the familial transmission of emotional memory, whereas male participants render sentiments of resentment and anger more publicly visible. Cem rituals emerge as key sites where collective memory is reproduced, mourning finds expression, and intergenerational transmission is enacted through embodied performance. By integrating the sociology of emotions and historical sociology, the study demonstrates how collective memory is affectively encoded and elucidates the emotional foundations of social identity. Its principal theoretical contribution lies in reconceptualizing unfinished mourning not as a clinical state but as a modality of social solidarity, political endurance, and meaning making under conditions of ongoing structural non-recognition.