Trauma

1. Trauma & Globalization

2. Outline • Definitions of Trauma • How is trauma related to globalization? • First Responses • Historical Representation • The following weeks: • Trauma and identity • Trauma in Different Perspectives; • Trauma, its Mediatization and other responses –八卦化 (doom to boom)

3. Trauma: Definitions and Issues • (1. a bodily wound 外傷, 損傷) 2. a wound, a breach on the mind 精神創傷; • Of victims; of surviving witness; of all of us; of history’s im/possibility of referentiality. • surviving – symptoms of shock, absorption and loss; identity re-construction • Representation: delayed appearance; twofold disjunction • Between experience and testimony: of Witness –reliability of memory and memory work. “Witness can only be accessible to the extent that it is not fully perceived or experienced as it occurs.” • Between representation and understanding: of Reader – an ‘obligation to recognize another’s experience as irreducibly other and irreducible to generalizations.”

4. Trauma: Definitions and Issues (2) • delayed appearance (or belated impact): a wound that cries out; that tells us a reality which cannot be otherwise known. • Tasso’s story of Tancred and Clorinda (textbook chap 8) • 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. Cathy Caruth: “The voice of his beloved bears witness to the past he has unwittingly repeated.” (trauma as double) The story of trauma—the story of belated experience

5. 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).

6. How is trauma related to globalization? • Anti-Globalization (corporate-driven globalization; resistance to U.S. government, to the West, to ‘McWorld’) in the form of terrorism; • Many historical traumas (e.g. Holocaust; Vietnam War; 911) have to do with racial/cultural oppression and resistance to it. • The news get to be widespread; • Economic crises and some natural disasters – interconnected;

7. First Responses EMOTIONAL REACTIONS 1) Lack of control – A. Loss of “volume control” (textbook chap 7 p. 4; 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 • C. Thinking under Stress -- worrying or ruminating -- intrusive thoughts of the trauma  Action not Thought (oversimplified decision; poor judgement) source

8. EMOTIONAL REACTIONS (2) Fragmentation • A. of the past -- Remembering under Stress – speechlessness; non-verbal selective memories p. 5 (egret, cat, teapot) ”amnesia” flashbacks -- feeling like the trauma is happening now • Nightmares • B. Isolation; loss of contact tendency to isolate oneself • feelings of detachment • 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

9. EMOTIONAL REACTIONS (2) Fragmentation • Dissociation (p. 7): “disruption of the usu. integrated functions of consciousness, memory identity, or perception of environment.”  fragmentation of identity. source

10. 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 (否認機制, disavowal) •  numbness; emotional numbing or restricted range of feelings •  return, delayed experience; •  reconstruction of myth; consumption of disaster 災區一日遊 • attempts to avoid anything associated with trauma • increased need to control everyday experiences source

11. First Responses –”Physical” 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

12. Post-Traumatic Syndrome • 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 (The English Patient the man and the woman in Hiroshima mon amour) Endorphin: a chemical naturally released in the brain to reduce pain, and which in large amounts can make you feel relaxed and/or energetic.