Emotional Public: Treme as Post-Katrina Trauma Narrative

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-49
Author(s):  
Outi J. Hakola
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Mediation Process ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Trauma Narrative

Cultural traumas are social, discursive and narrative processes where traumatic events, such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and their memories are described and interpreted. In fiction, in this case in HBO’s drama series Treme (2010-2013), trauma-related experiences are given meaning through narration, and in this mediation process collective memories are constructed. In this article, I analyze the ways in which the narration of Treme represents loss and remembering. I argue that by emphasizing sentimental nostalgia and the emotional reactions of the characters, the narration aims to create sympathy and empathy in the viewers, and in this way the drama series creates an emotional public sphere for the discussions over the rebuilding of post-Katrina New Orleans.

scholarly journals Inducing moral elevation in veterans with PTSD: An experimental investigation using a mixed methods approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 204380872098241
Author(s):  
Adam P. McGuire ◽  
Joseph Mignogna
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
State Level ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Ptsd Symptoms ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Trauma Narrative ◽  
Study Task ◽  
Level Elevation ◽  
Moral Elevation ◽  
Psychosocial Benefits

Moral elevation is a positive emotion described as feeling inspired by others’ virtuous actions. Elevation has several psychosocial benefits, some of which may be relevant to trauma-related distress; however, past studies have primarily examined elevation in nonclinical, civilian populations or in naturalistic studies. This experimental study used mixed methods to assess if veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) experience elevation when exposed to elevation stimuli in a controlled setting. Participants included 47 veterans with significant PTSD symptoms. Following baseline measures and a written trauma narrative, veterans were randomized to an elevation or amusement condition where they viewed two videos intended to elicit the condition emotion. Veterans also provided a written journal response describing their reaction to the videos. Self-report measures were administered after each study task to assess state-level elevation and amusement. Veterans randomized to the elevation condition reported significantly higher levels of elevation after videos compared to veterans in the amusement condition. Qualitative results offered further support for differences between groups and identified unique themes related to the experience of elevation. Overall, findings indicate it is possible to induce elevation in veterans with significant PTSD symptoms. Additionally, qualitative results highlight specific benefits of elevation and potential targets for treatment integration and future exploration.

Surfing with Jonah: Reading Jonah as a Postcolonial Trauma Narrative

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)

Recounting coup as the recirculation of Indigenous vitality: A narrative alternative to historical trauma

2021 ◽  
pp. 136346152110549
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Gone
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
American Indian ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Psychological Trauma ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Trauma Narrative ◽  
War Narratives ◽  
Tribal Communities ◽  
The Impact

Contemporary American Indians suffer from disproportionately high degrees of psychiatric distress. Mental health researchers and professionals, as well as American Indian community members, have consistently associated these disproportionate rates of distress with Indigenous historical experiences of European and Euro-American colonization. This emphasis on the impact of colonization and associated historical consciousness within tribal communities has occasioned increasingly widespread professional consideration of historical trauma among Indigenous peoples. In contrast to personal experiences of a traumatic nature, the discourse of Indigenous historical trauma (IHT) weds the concepts of “historical oppression” and “psychological trauma” to explain community-wide risk for adverse mental health outcomes originating from the depredations of past colonial subjugation through intergenerational transmission of vulnerability and risk. Long before the emergence of accounts of IHT, however, many American Indian communities prized a markedly different form of narrative: the coup tale. By way of illustration, I explore various historical functions of this speech genre by focusing on Aaniiih-Gros Ventre war narratives, including their role in conveying vitality or life. By virtue of their recognition and celebration of agency, mastery, and vitality, Aaniiih war stories functioned as the discursive antithesis of IHT. Through comparative consideration of the coup tale and the trauma narrative, I propose an alternative framework for cultivating Indigenous community “survivance” rather than vulnerability based on these divergent discursive practices.

scholarly journals The Metamorphosis of the Victim of Crime: From Crime to Culture and the Implications for Justice

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 4-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Walklate
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Side Effects ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Trauma Narrative ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
As If

Beck (2015: 81) observes, metamorphosis ‘is proceeding latently, behind the mind walls of unintended side effects, which are being constructed as ‘natural’ and ‘self-evident’. Thus Beck’s concept of metamorphosis conceives of social change as unnoticed and unacknowledged. Such change is evident in the contemporary ever present invocation of the ‘victim’ in a wide range of different, crime-soaked circumstances. This paper is concerned to explore this metamorphosis of the ‘victim’ in reflecting on two narratives: the victim narrative and the trauma narrative. The contemporary conflation of these two narratives has led Agamben (1999: 13) to suggest that policy has proceeded as if ‘“testis” (the testimony of a person as a third party in a trial or a law suit) can be conflated with “superstes” (a person who has lived through something and can thereby bear witness to it)’. The paper makes the case that this conflation has consequences for understandings of justice.

scholarly journals “Daddy, can’t you see we are burning?” Traumatic Time and Parental Responsibility in Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-52
Author(s):  
Lona Moutafidou
Keyword(s):  
Child Death ◽  
Parental Responsibility ◽  
Trauma Narrative ◽  
Dead Child ◽  
The One ◽  
Present Life ◽  
Traumatic Impact ◽  
Impact Flash

In Kenneth Lonergan’s film Manchester by the Sea, screened in 2016, Lee commits a life-changing mistake: on his way to the mini-market, he forgets to put the screen on the fireplace. Upon his return, he becomes a numbed witness to the spectacle of his own family tragedy as the authorities remove his children’s bodies from the burning house scene. This significant event is represented through a sequence of flashbacks, which designates said cinematic device as one of the film’s most important features. Indeed, in The Trauma Question, Roger Luckhurst approaches the flashback as “the cinema’s rendition of the frozen moment of the traumatic impact . . . flash[ing] back insistently in the present because the image cannot yet or perhaps ever be narrativized as past.” Years after the incident, and still unable to address the wound of his parental negligence and child-death trauma, Lee dreams of his dead daughter suggestively asking, “Daddy, can’t you see we are burning?” The question echoes the one from Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, where another father dreams of his dead child being burnt. In Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History, Cathy Caruth examines Freud and Lacan’s analysis of this question as to the significance of grief articulation, trauma coping and trauma persistence in sleep and awaken reality. The purpose of this article is to examine anachrony as a feature which exalts the dysfunctional inertia of a present life and of a traumatized mind afflicted by events which have been impossible to either register, integrate or narrate. Secondly, the article will try to unearth the mechanics of Lee’s grief and guilt via his daughter’s question. Emphasis will be placed on Lee’s inability to assume what Caruth calls the “ethical burden of survival” when asked to be his orphaned nephew’s guardian. This will be viewed as a reminder of Lee’s failure as a parent and as a challenge and invitation for the character to recover from the vacuum of his current death-in-life.

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