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I.

THE ADVENT OF TRAUMA STUDIES


A. Vietnam and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Vietnam War veterans were found to have many problems with their family lives
and interpersonal relationships due to the horrific actions they were forced to
endure, causing them intense psychological and emotional scarring. This was later
recognized as PTSD, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
B. The 20th Century as "Trauma"
The 20th Century is known as a time of trauma due to a return to ethics (seen in
the rise of human rights issues such as feminism, mental health awareness, and
rights for the LGBTQA++); coupled with a focus on post-colonialism, postmodernism, and memory studies, more and more people are dubbing themselves
victims.
II. DEFINING TRAUMA
A. Takes its etymology from (Some Greek Lettering I Could Not Copy) translates to a
wound inflicted upon the mind
B. Canonical form in PTSD
Description of Trauma takes its canonical form in PTSD and descriptions of
symptoms, such as: intrusive flashbacks, recurring dreams, exaggerated startleresponse, hyper-vigilance; while in the psychological level: depression, cynicism, at
the same time, total absence of recall.
C. Life/Death Dichotomy
The oscillation of the crisis of death and the crisis of life; the suffering of survival,
survivors guilt.

III. TRAUMA AND LITERARTURE


A. Departure from Structuralism
Narratives as both a response and an enactment itself of traumatic disruption, so
that trauma generates narrative possibility as impossibility.
B. Why literature?
If Freud turns to literature to describe traumatic experience, it is because literature
like psychoanalysis is interested in the complex relation between knowing and not
knowing. Literature defies and claims understanding at the same time. The trauma

narrative listens to a voice that it cannot fully know, but to which it nontheless bears
witness. Trauma demands to be and yet cannot be read.
C. The Trauma Novel/Trauma Genre
Characteristics of the Trauma Genre
- Prefers temporal disruption; the anti-narrative, non-linearity, cyclical
narratives.
- Disordered plot (to mimic the trauma).
- Themes of repetition.
- Apparition of specters; usually symbolizes the past as an intrusion to the
present. Not to be mistaken for memory recall, this is not a memory
recollection at all. There are memories that are not honored yet. Also
symbolizes the lives that are still crying out to be recognized.
- Sometimes, a question of transmission. (How trauma is passed from one
generation to another.)
IV. ISSUES IN TRAUMA STUDIES
A. Trauma and/as History
Trauma permits a new understanding of memory in the sense that it does not
eliminate history but it resituates our understanding of it via different viewpoints or
perspectives.
B. Victim Status
Conflation of victim and trauma. Perpetrator/Victim relationship. Separation
between the victim and the trauma. Not all traumatized people are victims. There
is also the problem of voyeurism, and the ethical practice of being a witness.
C. Transmissibility
How the trauma is presented through the eyes of each generation.
D. Postcolonial Contentions
Pre-eminence of the Holocaust as THE traumatic experience. The Holocaust is being
interrogated as a "screen memory", asking whether the popularity of the
Holocaust is being used to hide more traumatic experiences such as the Armenian
Genocide. There is also the question of Euro-Centricity, as most of trauma studies
focuses on the West, disregarding the East for exploration of the study.

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