Introduction to

Trauma Studies
Dr. Will Kurlinkus
§ By the end of your intro I should have a thesis, questions, know
your lens (though not have it explained), know your cases, and
know your structure.
§ Show me your problem/topic, demonstrate it.
§ Pose your research question or puzzle in relation to that
demonstration
§ Clearly signpost.
§ Introduce me to the things/people you are going to be
looking at. Don’t make we wait for your methods.

§ Common Errors
§ Get to your thesis, argument, or research question faster. Introductions
§ Illustrate your thesis, topic, or research question faster.
§ TLDR: 2-3 pages.
§ Starting too broad.
§ Two Examples
§ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S87554
61510000800
§ https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/19.3/topoi/deluca/index.
html
What did you
write about?
 What is
trauma?
In Small Groups—layout for me some
of its key terms, concepts, and debates
What does this mean?
Trauma defies witnessing and
representation (it is affective vs. emotional?)
 § “It is not that our lives have become inherently more traumatic,
but that we have found new ways to categorize, represent, and
exploit distressing experiences” (3)

§ Railway spine: originally a nervous system injury caused by train

accidents—became a psychologically injury divorced of physical
injury (15).
§ Germany introduced its first welfare programs—many

History of
critiqued diagnoses of trauma as “pension neuroses” (18)
§ It was very hard to prove psychological trauma for those
injured (hence untellable/defying representation)

Trauma Studies § Hysteria: preferred diagnosis over trauma in that it could be “cured.”
§ Charcot: hysteria is awakened when an inherited

(Bond & Craps)

predisposition is triggered by physical injury (moves from
purely women to railroad workers). Cured by hypnosis.
§ Janet: hysteria caused by dissociation (the experiencing of
two thoughts, wills, actions in one body—one aware one
subconscious). Haunted by idees fixes that need to be
extinguished or replaced.
§ Freud: trauma is caused by sexual experienced in one’s
childhood. Traumas are triggers for these earlier events we
can’t remember (he has to revise this because it would mean
that all trauma was caused essentially by infant sexual
abuse—shifts to fantasies rather than experiences).
§ War and PTSD: The trauma of soldiers in WWI calls into question Freud's

History of
repressed sexual memories hypothesis.
§ Returning soldiers were traumatized by gruesome trench warfare and
new tech of war. Nations had to deal with this.
§ Some countries like Germany feared that saying soldiers could be
traumatized meant that they would claim trauma wouldn’t let them
fight. Vs. diagnoses of hysteria didn’t give soldiers a pension.
Trauma Studies
§

§
Italians said traumatized soldiers were just weak mentally (the French
did the same).
In American and Britain: shellshock and cowardice blurred similarly--
(Bond & Craps)
the American Legion fought this. In the 20s the Veteran’s Bureau
started treating shellshock.

§ Vietnam and PTSD: Vietnam veterans were often not volunteers, they were
not welcomed as heroes, they are isolated from other vets (psychological
help was focused on facilitating soldiers return to combat).
§ PTSD was added to the DSM in 1978 based on observations of Vietnam
vets the VA didn’t want anything to do with this, since it would mean a
massive monetary commitment.
§ Definitions of PTSD are critiqued for still focusing on curing sick
individuals rather than resolving causes as well as focusing on male
soldiers rather than the much more common abused civilian women.
This focus also focuses PTSD on one time traumas rather than a
constant state of repeated trauma (eg living in an abusive house).
 § What is cultural vs. psychological trauma? Can trauma
be collective and cultural?
§ acting out trauma (melancholia—staying with it,
describing it—see Caruth) vs. working-through
(mourning, healing--LaCapra)
§ Caruth: trauma is a sign of survival, living on after disaster—
the survival itself can be traumatic. Trauma is reckoning with
Trauma survival. Trauma can be cultural—we’re living in a
traumatized culture, fragmented, postmodern. It cannot be

Theories worked through.

§ LaCapra: trauma as a term should have some correspondence
(Bond & Craps) to trauma victims. It loses its meaning when applied to culture
at a mass scale.

§ Witnessing and empathy for traumatized others:

Lacapra critiques the tendency for individuals to
overidentify with traumatized others. Going through a
school shooting vs. living in a culture with school shootings
Is COVID-19 a trauma-
inducing event?
+Describe a theory
+Ecologically
+Give me concrete evidence
 § What is contemporary testimonial culture?
§ The force of contemporary testimonial culture hails
viewers into becoming witnesses: “speaking out about
injustice, trauma, pain and grief have become crucial
aspects of contemporary life which have transformed
notions of what it means to be a subject, what it means to
speak, and how we can understand the formation of
Testimonial communities and collectives” (2).

Cultures (Ahmed § “One testifies when the truth is in doubt (when it has yet
& Stacey) to be decided) and when an injustice has occurred” (2)
§ That testimony of trauma is impossible—both because
the witness can never grasp but also because the
testimonial can never convey.

§ Testimony as a form of power vs. a site of re-

traumatization
#MeToo & #BLM as Testimonial Cultures
 Resiliency and 9/11
§ Why is resiliency our default response to trauma as a culture?

§ Resilience can politicize mourning by breeding nationalism and

overlooking political responsibilities, but it can also provide
structures of representation for making sense of overwhelming
tragic events.

§ Why are everyday objects in memorial museums? What

is their rhetorical function?
§ Museum is filled with “objects that witnessed and
survived” (the slurry wall and the last column)

§ From resilience, subjects may “collectively create a kind of

fortitude, the realization of a rhetorical imagination with which to
overcome those challenges and obstacles that otherwise will bury
us where we stand”

§ How could a memorial be “too much too soon”? (2)

§ The memorial prohibits surrounding neighborhoods from returning

to normal (which is definitionally resiliency as well).

§ Goal: help public grieve by organizing memory.

§ What is a rhetoric of resiliency and where else do we see it?

What do we see
here?
OKC Bombing Memorial Speeches
 § Trauma upsets the moral order: Oklahoma is no longer
a safe place. But also resets the moral order: Oklahoma
is the model of the nation/the heartland.

§ The Oklahoma Standard: helping one another after

Narratives collective traumas. A narrative of resiliency.

Surrounding the § Notice how little talk of McVeigh and Nichols there is.
There motives and humanity break many of the
OKC Bombing narratives of the chapter.

§ Narratives of resiliency quiet often prevent structural

change. They are inherently about bouncing back to
normal. But normal is where the trauma came from.
 Thanotourism
Why do we visit places of trauma?
How have such trauma experiences been ritualized?
We’re Visiting the OKC
Bombing Memorial
Museum Soon
What do this week’s readings teach us to analyze in the
museum?
Research these terms for 5 minutes:
The Great Resignation &
Quiet Quitting