Trauma

1
Trauma
Psychoanalysis Identity, Visual Pleasure and
Trauma

• Trauma theories abbreviated
• Trauma, Identity and Historical Representation
• (next time) Beyond the Pleasure Principle
• (Trauma and Media Representation ??? doom to
  boom)

2
What have we learned so far?

• New Criticism to Discourse Analysis (5 wks)
  Identity and Text
• New Criticism
• Process of Signification and Semiotics
• Foucault and New Historicism/Cultural Materialism
  
• Discourse
• Panopticism

3
What have we learned so far?

• II. Psychoanalysis (4 wks) Identity, Visual
  Pleasure and Trauma
• Freud and The Uncanny whats beyond our
  conceptual framework
• Psychoanalysis Visual Culture, Visual Pleasure,
  Visual Disruption visual construction of gender
  positions male voyeurism, visual fetishism, etc.
  
• Trauma whats beyond our conceptual framework
  (both our psychic responses to it and historical
  representations)

4
Outline

• Definitions of Trauma Review trauma and
  identity
• First Responses and Later Psychological Responses
• Trauma and History Cathy Caruth
• Trauma and Modernity (Theories of Trauma)
• Trauma and Identity Viewers Positions

5
Trauma Definitions and Issues

• Definitions
• a bodily wound ??, ??)
• a wound, a breach on the mind ????
• Whose? (trauma ?tragedy)
• Historical or external trauma victims
  surviving witnesses
• Existential or internal trauma all of us because
  of the split in our psyche, or the im/possibility
  to know and understand (a past event, or history
  as a whole)

6
Traumatic Responses Psychoanalytical Perspective

• different causes of trauma
• externaltrain accident, war, sexual abuse
• internalOedipal crisis, fear of castration and
  absence of the mother
• Responses (next time)
• repetition compulsion
• acceptance/sublimation of absence thru
  symbolization in games (e.g. fort-da game or
  peek-a-boo) and arts,
• disavowal denying while admitting in forms of
  fantasies and fetishism (e.g. the mothers lack
  of phallus/power) In Changs words, ???? (pp.
  102-103)

7
Trauma Definitions and Issues (2)

• Responses
• Survivors first responses of shock, absorption
  of shock, sense of confusion, fragmentation,
  dissociation or loss
• 2. Later responses Neurotic symptoms (e.g.
  nightmares) or identity re-construction
  acting-out or working-through

Mourning or Melancholia
8
Ref. First Physical Responses

• PHYSICAL REACTIONS or symptoms
• aches and pains like headaches, backaches,
  stomach aches
• sudden sweating and/or heart palpitations
  (fluttering)
• changes in sleep patterns, appetite, interest in
  sex
• constipation or diarrhea
• more susceptible to colds and illnesses
• easily startled by noises or unexpected touch
  (the fight-or-flight reaction)
• increased use of alcohol or drugs and/or
  overeating (lack of volume control)

source
9
Ref. First EMOTIONAL Responses 1) Lack of
control
textbook chap 11 p. 4

• A. Loss of volume controlmodulating the
  level of arousal.)
• shock and disbelief fear and/or anxiety
  grief, disorientation, denial
• hyper-alertness or hypervigilance (????) (e.g.
  fear of fire in Summer Flower)
• irritability, restlessness, outbursts of anger or
  rage
• emotional swings -- like crying and then laughing
  
• B. Learned Helplessness (p. 3) feelings of
  helplessness, panic, feeling out of control ?
  give up trying (e.g. stay put)
• C. Thinking under Stress -- worrying or
  ruminating -- intrusive thoughts of the trauma ?
  Action not Thought (oversimplified decision poor
  judgment)

source
10
EMOTIONAL REACTIONS (2) Fragmentation

• A. of the past -- Remembering under Stress
  speechlessness non-verbal selective memories p.
  5 (egret in In Country, cat, teapotin SH-V)
  ?amnesia flashbacks -- feeling like the trauma
  is happening now
• Nightmares ? ? paranoia of Cameron, The Stunt Man
• B. Isolation loss of contact tendency to
  isolate oneself
• feelings of detachment Cameron, The Stunt Man
  SH-V
• concern over burdening others with problems
• difficulty trusting and/or feelings of betrayal
• difficulty concentrating or remembering
• feelings of self-blame and/or survivor guilt
• shame
• diminished interest in everyday activities or
  depression

source
11
EMOTIONAL REACTIONS (2) Fragmentation

• Dissociation (p. 7) disruption of the usu.
  integrated functions of consciousness, memory
  identity, or perception of environment. ?
  fragmentation of identity. ? Naomi in Obasan

source
12
EMOTIONAL REACTIONS (3) Pessimism or Escapism

• Pessimism loss of a sense of order or fairness
  in the world expectation of doom and fear of the
  future
• Escapism and/or rationalization
• minimizing the experience (first experience of
  numbness ? mechanism of denial (????, disavowal)
• ? numbness emotional numbing or restricted range
  of feelings
• ? return, delayed experience
• (social denial ?e.g. Hollywoods reconstruction
  of the Rambo myth consumption of disaster ?????)
• attempts to avoid anything associated with trauma
  
• increased need to control everyday experiences

source
13
Post-Traumatic Syndrome Acting-Out of Trauma
textbook chap 11 pp. 9-10

• Denial
• or addiction p. 9 (self-mutilation, violence,
  drug)
• --addicted to their own internal endorphins
  feeling calm only when they are under stress.
• -- death drive
• -- alteration in the opioid system
  (narcotic?????).
• Traumatic Reenactment (repetition compulsion)
  acting out, repeating the action without knowing
  it.
• Trauma-Bonding (staying with an abusive husband)
• ? ? Working-Through of Trauma

Endorphin a chemical naturally released in the
brain to reduce pain, and which in large amounts
can make you feel relaxed and/or energetic.
14
Trauma Definitions and Issues (3)

• Representation delayed appearance twofold
  disjunction
• Between experience and testimony of Witness
  reliability of memory and memory work.
• -- no witness chap 12 202,
• -- partial experience) Witness can only be
  accessible to the extent that it is not fully
  perceived or experienced as it occurs (Wolfreys
  304). ? Cathy Caruth
• 2. Between representation and understanding of
  Reader an obligation to recognize anothers
  experience as irreducibly other and irreducible
  to generalizations (Wolfreys 304)
• ? Mediation (film, news, ritual, donations)

15
Trauma and History Cathy Caruth

• Tassos story of Tancred and Clorinda (textbook
  chap 12 203 chap 13)
• Tancred kills Clorinda when she is disguised as
  an enemy knight.
• After her burial he goes into a magic forest and
  slashes a tall tree with his sword.
• The blood streams from the cut and the voice of
  Clorinda is heard complaining that he has wounded
  his beloved again. The voice of his beloved
  bears witness to the past he has unwittingly
  repeated. (trauma as double)
• Cathy Caruth the story as a parable
• Trauma is always the story of a wound that
  cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to
  tell us of a reality or truth that is not
  otherwise available. This truth, in its delayed
  appearance and its belated address, cannot be
  linked only to what is known, but also to what
  remains unknown in our very action and our
  language (Caruth 4)

16
Trauma and History The Wound that Cries out the
2nd time.

• 1). delayed appearance (or belated impact) a
  wound that cries out, that tells us of a reality
  which cannot be otherwise known.
• The story of traumathe story of belated
  experience, or double experience
• 2) double-talking
• Moses stories of the Jews and of Christians
• Confrontation with death and with life
• Stories of the dead, intertwined with those of
  survivors (e.g. dream of a burning child-
  Father, dont you see Im burning?)
• 3) wound of ones own? of others.

17
Trauma and Modernity

• WWI a war on the mind WWII a war in the mind
  (194)
• 3 stories Freuds, Benjamins (1940) and Woolf
  (1941)
• Freud a Jewish persons (or everyones)
  identity is founded on trauma (of patricide, or
  Oedipus complex) ? war vets repetition
  compulsion (trauma is the alien in ones self)
• Benjamin the shock of Modernity actively
  comprehended thru fragments (after-image p. 272)
  
• Woolf fragmentary moments of her past suggesting
  her need of comprehension

18
Trauma and Modernity

• 3 stories Freuds, Benjamins (1940) and Woolf
  (1941)
• Woolf personal traumas of death and sexual
  abuse ? scene-making in A Sketch of the Past
  (1939) (note Blitz as a factor of her suicide)
• Many of the scenes Woolf remembers, she writes,
  brought with them a peculiar horror and a
  physical collapse they seemed dominant myself
  passive. (199)
• Experience that cannot be comprehended.

19
Examples of Collective/Cultural Trauma

• Wars ? Genocide e.g. Holocaust (the systematic
  state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish
  men, women, and children and millions of others
  by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during
  World War II. The Germans called this the final
  solution to the Jewish question.)
• ? Migration (e.g. partition in India migration
  to Taiwan)
• Natural Disasters (earthquake, typhoon,
  hurricane virus and transmittable diseases
  (AIDS, SARS, Ebola) technology breakdown
  accidents (plane crash, blackout).

20
Trauma and Identity

• How and why are the following characters
  traumatized? How do they understand/respond to
  their trauma? Do they get over their traumatic
  symptoms?
• Briony, Cecilia, Robbie In Atonement
• Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse V (and its
  author)
• Brodecks Report (Louis text)
• Cereus Blooms at Night
• We???

21
The Viewers/Readers Perspectives

• Four main positions in viewing trauma films
  (Kaplan pp. 9-10)
• the position of being introduced to trauma in a
  film which ends with a comforting cure. (e.g.
  disaster films, Vietnam war films such as In
  Country.)
• The position of being vicariously traumatized
  (e.g. Videodrome, The Fly by David Cronenberg,
  Cube)

22
The Viewers/Readers Perspectives (2)

• The position of a voyeur of films and TV
  programs which turn others traumas into
  spectacles.
• The position of a absent witness. (Being there
  and not there aware of the distance.) This
  position of witness may open up a space of
  transformation of the viewer through the empathic
  identification without vicarious traumatization.
  . . . It is the unusual, anti-narrative process
  of the narration that is itself transformative in
  inviting the viewer to be at once emotionally
  there . . . but also to keep a cognitive distance
  and awareness denied to victim by the traumatic
  process. (e.g. next time -- Hiroshima mon
  amour, Lingchi)

23
The Viewers/Readers Perspectives (3)

• Questions
• What is the connection between the ???Haiti
  earthquakes, the flood and Mustard Seed
  Childrens Home?
• Is sympathy possible?
• Is being a sympathetic witness enough?
• Reading can involve action critical reading is
  critical practice (with a purpose to change)

24
How is trauma related to globalization?A Summary

• (post-)Modernity itself can be shocking. ?
  traumatizing or numbing
• Many historical traumas (e.g. Holocaust Vietnam
  War 911) have to do with colonial powers and
  their racial/cultural oppression and resistance
  to it.
• Anti-Globalization (corporate-driven
  globalization resistance to U.S. government, to
  the West, to McWorld) in the form of
  terrorism
• News broadcast bring traumas for our daily
  consumption
• Economic crises and some natural disasters
  interconnected
• Foxconn 11 suicide jumps

25
Works Cited

• Wolfreys, Julian, ed. Introducing Criticism at
  the 21st Century. Edinburgh Edinburgh UP, 2002.
  
• E. Ann Kaplan and Ban Wang. From Traumatic
  Paralysis to the Force Field of Modernity.
  Trauma and cinema Cross-Curltural Explorations.
  Eds. E. Ann Kaplan and Ban Wang.Hong Kong UP,
  2004.