Applying Trauma Theory to Agency Practice

This article theorizes the Zimbabwean writer Stanlake Samkange’s turn from the novel to philosophy as an effort to circumvent the representational pressure exerted by African cultural traumatization. In breaking with the novel form to coauthor a philosophical treatise called Hunhuism or Ubuntuism in the same year as Zimbabwe achieves independence (1980), Samkange advances a comportment-based, deontological alternative to the psychic or subjective model of personhood that anchors trauma theory. Revisiting the progression from his most achieved novel, The Mourned One, to Hunhuism or Ubuntuism thus offers fresh insight into the range of options available to independence-era writers for representing the relationship between African individuality and collectivity. At the same time, it suggests a complementary and overlooked relationship between novelistic and philosophical forms in an African context.

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Surfing with Jonah: Reading Jonah as a Postcolonial Trauma Narrative

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament ◽

10.1177/03090892211001396 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 030908922110013

Author(s):

L. Juliana Claassens

Keyword(s):

Trauma Theory ◽

Trauma Narrative ◽

Theoretical Perspectives ◽

The Individual

Jione Havea observes how over the years Jonah has repeatedly found himself hurled into a swirling sea of interpretative methods, bobbing up and down on waves of traditional, contemporary, mainstream, and marginalized approaches. This article seeks to enter these churning waters and consider how these interpretative waves flow together to form new waves, which invite us to metaphorically surf together with the prophet Jonah, who once more has been tossed into a sea of readings. I propose that several important theoretical perspectives concerning postcolonial trauma theory are valuable for the ongoing conversation regarding what it means to read Jonah in the context of colonization, both ancient and modern. In particular, this article will focus on what postcolonial trauma theorists describe as the ‘material,’ ‘spatial,’ and ‘collective’ aspects of trauma instead of the ‘individual, temporal, and linguistic’ qualities highlighted by earlier (Western) trauma theorists (Visser, ‘Decolonizing Trauma Theory,’ 253)

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“Look at What They’ve Turned Us Into”: Reading the Story of Lot’s Daughters with Trauma Theory and The Handmaid’s Tale

Open Theology ◽

10.1515/opth-2020-0156 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 208-223

Author(s):

Kirsi Cobb

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Trauma Theory ◽

Traumatic Experiences ◽

Direct Trauma

Abstract The story of Lot’s daughters’ incest with their father in Genesis 19:30–38 has been variously understood as a myth, a trickster tale, and an androcentric phantasy. In this paper, I will use insights gained from trauma theory, as well as from the characters of Emily and Moira in the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, to evaluate the daughters’ actions. Studying the characters in the final form of the text, the women undergo traumatic experiences as their father offers their bodies to be raped (Gen. 19:7–8) and they witness the destruction of their home (Gen. 19:24–25). Consequently, they engage in what could be described as a traumatic re-enactment with their father, where the roles of the perpetrator and the victim are reversed, and the continuation of the patriarchal line is simultaneously guaranteed. Read in conjunction with the fates of Emily and Moira, the daughters’ experience could be summarized in Emily’s observation, “Look at what they’ve turned us into.” In the lives of all the women, the experience of cumulative and direct trauma influenced their decision making as well as the choices they had available. This leaves the audience in a moment of uncertainty, where evaluating the women’s actions becomes a complex, even an impossible prospect.

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Like Daughter, Like Grandson: Queering Post-Traumatic Memory

Memory Studies ◽

10.1177/1750698020982017 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 175069802098201

Author(s):

Golan Moskowitz

Keyword(s):

Queer Theory ◽

Queer Studies ◽

Memory Studies ◽

Trauma Theory ◽

Traumatic Memory ◽

Mother Child Relationships ◽

Post Traumatic

Queer and trauma theory both concern internal experiences that challenge normative social frameworks. Considering the roles of queerness within trauma and memory studies opens interpretive pathways for otherwise discredited or inaccessible meanings. It also relates survivors’ receding knowledge to those currently “queered” or endangered. With a focus on childhood and mother-child relationships, this article maps intersections of memory studies, queer theory, and trauma theory, applying subsequent insights to an “autotheoretical” analysis of the author’s own transnational, post-Holocaust family across four generations. It explores the possibility through queer studies of excavating new post-traumatic meanings and relating those meanings to present contexts.

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Victim–perpetrator dynamics through the lens of betrayal trauma theory

The Abused and the Abuser ◽

10.4324/9781351213981-8 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 131-140

Author(s):

Kerry L. Gagnon ◽

Michelle Seulki Lee ◽

Anne P. DePrince

Keyword(s):

Trauma Theory ◽

Betrayal Trauma

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Two Trauma Communities: A Philosophical Archaeology of Cultural and Clinical Trauma Theories

Trauma and Transcendence ◽

10.5422/fordham/9780823280261.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 17-52

Author(s):

Vincenzo Di Nicola

Keyword(s):

Interdisciplinary Research ◽

Clinical Work ◽

Cultural Trauma ◽

Trauma Theory ◽

Clinical Use ◽

Cultural Research

While the goal of both clinical work and cultural research generally is the transformation and transcendence of trauma, these communities struggle to characterize trauma as a unified discourse even within one discipline. This chapter makes three proposals that provide order for the concept of trauma through conceptual dichotomies that divide their discourses: first, the term has accrued a supplementarity or excess, which helps explain the variation between the clinical use of trauma and its cultural avatar; second, theorists must separate the ways the word trauma deployed within the trauma process; third, trauma must be separated radically from Event, which is the subtext of a cultural trauma theory. This philosophical archaeology offers keys of translation between these competing cultural and psychiatric trauma theories, calls to deactivate the desubjectivation associated with trauma, and opens new prospects for interdisciplinary research in these intersecting fields based on the possibilities of the Event.

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