Languages of Trauma: History, Memory, and Media
Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press (2021), xiv, 408 pp.
Contains illustrations
ISBN 978-1-4875-0896-8 (hbk); 978-1-4875-3940-5 (pdf)
"This volume traces the distinct cultural languages in which individual and collective forms of trauma are expressed in diverse variations, including oral and written narratives, literature, comic strips, photography, theatre, and cinematic images. The central argument is that traumatic memories are frequently beyond the sphere of medical, legal, or state intervention. To address these different, often intertwined modes of language, the contributors provide a variety of disciplinary approaches to foster innovative debates and provoke new insights. Prevailing definitions of trauma can best be understood according to the cultural and historical conditions within which they exist. Languages of Trauma explores what this means in practice by scrutinizing varied historical moments from the First World War onwards and particular cultural contexts from across Europe, the United States, Asia, and Africa – striving to help decolonize the traditional Western-centred history of trauma, dissolving it into multifaceted transnational histories of trauma cultures." (Publisher description)
Introduction: Languages of Trauma / Peter Leese, Julia Barbara Köhne, and Jason Crouthamel, 3
I. WORDS AND IMAGES
1 "A Perfect Hell of a Night which We Can Never Forget": Narratives of Trauma in the Private Writings of British and Irish Nurses in the First World War / Bridget E. Keown, 29
2 Religious Language in German Soldiers' Narratives of Traumatic Violence, 1914-1918 / Jason Crouthamel, 46
3 Languages of the Wound: Finnish Soldiers' Bodies as Sites of Shock during the Second World War / Ville Kivimäki, 70
4 Efim Segal, Shell-Shocked Sergeant: Red Army Veterans and the Expression and Representation of Trauma Memories / Robert Dale, 97
5 The Falling Man: Resisting and Resistant Visual Media in Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers (2004) / Jennifer Anderson Bliss, 120
II. MUSIC, THEATRE, AND VISUAL ARTS
6 Performing Songs and Staging Theatre Performances: Working through the Trauma of the 1965/66 Indonesian Mass Killings / Dyah Pitaloka and Hans Pols, 141
7 Some Things Are Difficult to Say, Re-membered / Katrina Bugaj, 160
8 Performing Memory in an Interdependent Body / Emily Mendelsohn, 183
9 Memory and Trauma: Two Contemporary Art Projects / Maj Hasager, 197
III. NORMALIZATIONS OF TRAUMA
10 Between Social Criticism and Epistemological Critique: Critical Theory and the Normalization of Trauma / Ulrich Koch, 213
11 The New Normal: Trauma as Successfully Failed Communication in Nurse Betty (2000) / Thomas Elsaesser, 239
12 The Exploitation of Trauma: (Mis-)Representations of Rape Victims in the War Film / Marzena Sokolowska-Paryz, 265
IV. REPRESENTATIONS IN FILM
13 Translating Individual and Collective Trauma through Horror: The Case of George A. Romero's Martin (1978) / Adam Lowenstein, 293
14 Aesthetic Displays of Perpetrators in The Act of Killing (2012): Post-atrocity Perpetrator Symptoms and Re-enactments of Violence / Julia Barbara Köhne, 310
15 Perpetrator Trauma and Current American War Cinema / Raya Morag, 360
Coda: Climate Trauma Reconsidered / E. Ann Kaplan, 384
I. WORDS AND IMAGES
1 "A Perfect Hell of a Night which We Can Never Forget": Narratives of Trauma in the Private Writings of British and Irish Nurses in the First World War / Bridget E. Keown, 29
2 Religious Language in German Soldiers' Narratives of Traumatic Violence, 1914-1918 / Jason Crouthamel, 46
3 Languages of the Wound: Finnish Soldiers' Bodies as Sites of Shock during the Second World War / Ville Kivimäki, 70
4 Efim Segal, Shell-Shocked Sergeant: Red Army Veterans and the Expression and Representation of Trauma Memories / Robert Dale, 97
5 The Falling Man: Resisting and Resistant Visual Media in Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers (2004) / Jennifer Anderson Bliss, 120
II. MUSIC, THEATRE, AND VISUAL ARTS
6 Performing Songs and Staging Theatre Performances: Working through the Trauma of the 1965/66 Indonesian Mass Killings / Dyah Pitaloka and Hans Pols, 141
7 Some Things Are Difficult to Say, Re-membered / Katrina Bugaj, 160
8 Performing Memory in an Interdependent Body / Emily Mendelsohn, 183
9 Memory and Trauma: Two Contemporary Art Projects / Maj Hasager, 197
III. NORMALIZATIONS OF TRAUMA
10 Between Social Criticism and Epistemological Critique: Critical Theory and the Normalization of Trauma / Ulrich Koch, 213
11 The New Normal: Trauma as Successfully Failed Communication in Nurse Betty (2000) / Thomas Elsaesser, 239
12 The Exploitation of Trauma: (Mis-)Representations of Rape Victims in the War Film / Marzena Sokolowska-Paryz, 265
IV. REPRESENTATIONS IN FILM
13 Translating Individual and Collective Trauma through Horror: The Case of George A. Romero's Martin (1978) / Adam Lowenstein, 293
14 Aesthetic Displays of Perpetrators in The Act of Killing (2012): Post-atrocity Perpetrator Symptoms and Re-enactments of Violence / Julia Barbara Köhne, 310
15 Perpetrator Trauma and Current American War Cinema / Raya Morag, 360
Coda: Climate Trauma Reconsidered / E. Ann Kaplan, 384
