TraumaTrauma

1. Trauma theories abbreviated

2. Trauma, Identity and Historical Representation

3. (next time) Beyond the Pleasure Principle

(Trauma and Media Representation 八卦化 doom to boom)

Psychoanalysis: Identity, Visual Pleasure and Trauma

What have we learned so far?

I. 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

What have we learned so far?

II. Psychoanalysis (4 wks) Identity, Visual Pleasure and Trauma

Freud and “The Uncanny” –what’s beyond our conceptual framework

“Psychoanalysis: Visual Culture, Visual Pleasure, Visual Disruption”– visual construction of gender positions: male voyeurism, visual fetishism, etc.

Trauma – what’s beyond our conceptual framework (both our psychic responses to it and historical representations)

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

Trauma: Definitions and Issues

Definitions: a bodily wound 外傷 , 損傷 ) a wound, a breach on the mind 精神創傷

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)

Traumatic Responses: Psychoanalytical Perspective different causes of trauma:

external—train accident, war, sexual abuse; internal—Oedipal 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 mother’s lack of phallus/power) In Chang’s words, 視而不見 (pp. 102-103)

Trauma: Definitions and Issues (2) Responses

1. Survivor’s 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

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

Ref. First EMOTIONAL Responses 1) Lack of control – A. Loss of “volume control”—modulating the level of

arousal.) shock and disbelief; fear and/or anxiety; grief, disorientation,

denial hyper-alertness or hypervigilance ( 驚弓之鳥 ) (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

textbook chap 11 p. 4

EMOTIONAL REACTIONS (2) Fragmentation

source

A. of the past -- Remembering under Stress – speechlessness; non-verbal selective memories p. 5 (egret in In Country, cat, teapot—in 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

EMOTIONAL REACTIONS (2) Fragmentation

source

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

EMOTIONAL REACTIONS (3) Pessimism or Escapism

source

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 ( 否認機制 , disavowal) numbness; emotional numbing or restricted range of feelings

return, delayed experience; (social denial e.g. Hollywood’s reconstruction of the

Rambo myth; consumption of disaster 災區一日遊 ) attempts to avoid anything associated with trauma increased need to control everyday experiences

Post-Traumatic Syndrome – Acting-Out of Trauma 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? 鴉片系統 ).

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.

textbook chap 11 pp. 9-10

Trauma: Definitions and Issues (3) Representation: delayed appearance; twofold

disjunction 1. 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 another’s experience as irreducibly other and irreducible to generalizations” (Wolfreys 304)

Mediation (film, news, ritual, donations…)

Trauma and History: Cathy Caruth Tasso’s 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)

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 trauma—the 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, don’t you see I’m burning?”)

3) wound of one’s own of others.

Trauma and Modernity WWI: a war on the mind; WWII: a war in the

mind (194) 3 stories: Freud’s, Benjamin’s (~1940) and

Woolf (~1941) Freud: a Jewish person’s (or everyone’s) identity is founded

on trauma (of patricide, or Oedipus complex) war vet’s repetition compulsion (trauma is the “alien” in one’s 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

Trauma and Modernity 3 stories: Freud’s, Benjamin’s (~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.

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).

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) Brodeck’s Report (Louis’ text) Cereus Blooms at Night We???

The Viewers/Readers’ Perspectives Four main positions in viewing trauma films

(Kaplan pp. 9-10)

1. 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.)

2. The position of being vicariously traumatized; (e.g. Videodrome, The Fly by David Cronenberg, Cube)

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)

The Viewers/Readers’ Perspectives (3)Questions: What is the connection between the 四

川、 Haiti earthquakes, the flood and Mustard Seed Children’s Home?

Is sympathy possible? Is being a sympathetic witness enough? Reading can involve action; critical reading

is critical practice (with a purpose to change)

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

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.