The third chapter of this book continues to explore how Almodóvar's cinema can function as a mode of witnessing and re-enacting traces of the traumatic past, as well as mediating between individual and shared experiences, through a complex relationship between subjectivity, trauma, memory and the ethical relation between film and the spectator. I am particularly interested in La mala educación's conception of the film medium as a generator of what Allison Landsberg calls ‘prosthetic memory’ (2004). In line with the previous chapter's arguments about ‘the im-possibility of not-sharing’ the irreducible other's traces of trauma and fragments of memory, the association of Almodóvar's film with ‘prosthetic memory’ points to the fragmentary embodiment of traumatic experiences and memories by, and displacement of them onto, those who may not have experienced them. This involves the relating of the self to the bodies and memories of others who are affected by the pains of history – here, in particular, sexual violence and abuse, and political repression during the Franco regime. As I explained in the Introduction, during Spain's political transition to democracy, the processes of mourning, abreaction and healing were forestalled. This had significant effects on the Spanish people's subjectivities and bodies.

I will mainly focus on the way Almodóvar emphasises corporeality in order to reflect on how fragments of memory and traces of trauma affect the present. In other words, La mala educación asks us to think of the body as a force that conditions the fragments of subjective and shared memory and history. The film explores how the subject may engage with fragments of subjective memory, associated here with the violence and abuse inflicted on Ignacio's body and subjectivity. On a parallel plane, subjective memory is aligned with collective memory and history, which the film associates with the aggression and repression that was inflicted on the Spanish national body and psyche by the Franco regime for much of its existence. We can see, then, that the film will emphasise the imbrications of subjective and cultural traumas. I will also discuss, although briefly, the performativity of identity, particularly in relation to the elusive character of Ángel/Juan/Ignacio/Zahara. But the chapter's main focus is not on the representation of bodies or the logic of identity.