Trauma

1. Trauma & Globalization Trauma theories abbreviated Trauma and Representation Trauma and Media Representation (八卦化 doom to boom)

2. Outline • Definitions of Trauma & Review: trauma and identity • First Responses • How is trauma related to globalization? • Trauma and Modernity • Trauma and History • Historical Representation

3. Trauma: Definitions and Issues • Definitions: • a bodily wound 外傷, 損傷) • a wound, a breach on the mind 精神創傷; • Whose? • victims’ & surviving witnesses’; • all of us because of the split in our psyche, or the im/possibility of to know and understand (a past event, or history as a whole)

4. Trauma: Definitions and Issues (2) • Responses 1. Survivor’s first responses of shock, absorption of shock, sense of confusion, fragmentation, dissociation or loss 2. Later responses: Neurotic symptoms (e.g. nightmares) or identity re-construction; acting-out or working-through

5. Trauma: Definitions and Issues (3) • Representation: delayed appearance; twofold disjunction 1. Between experience and testimony: of Witness –reliability of memory and memory work. (no “witness”; chap 12 202, or partial experience) “Witness can only be accessible to the extent that it is not fully perceived or experienced as it occurs” (Wolfreys 304). 2. Between representation and understanding: of Reader – an ‘obligation to recognize another’s experience as irreducibly other and irreducible to generalizations” (Wolfreys 304)  Mediation (film, news, ritual, donations…)

6. Trauma and Identity • How and why are the following characters traumatized? How do they understand/respond to their trauma? Do they “get over” their traumatic symptoms? • Briony, Cecilia, Robbie In Atonement • Naomi from Obasan (grandmother and mother next time) • Emmett from In Country • Cameron from The Stunt Man • We???

7. The Viewers/Readers’ Perspectives • Four main positions in viewing trauma films (Kaplan pp. 9-10) • the position of being introduced to trauma in a film which ends with a comforting ‘cure.’ (e.g. disaster films, Vietnam war films such as In Country.) • The position of being vicariously traumatized; (e.g. Videodrome, The Fly by David Cronenberg, Cube)

8. The Viewers/Readers’ Perspectives (2) • The position of a voyeur –of films and TV programs which turn others traumas into spectacles. • The position of a absent witness. (Being there and not there; aware of the distance.) “This position of ‘witness’ may open up a space of transformation of the viewer through the empathic identification without vicarious traumatization. . . . It is the unusual, anti-narrative process of the narration that is itself transformative in inviting the viewer to be at once emotionally there . . . but also to keep a cognitive distance and awareness denied to victim by the traumatic process.” (e.g. next time -- Hiroshima mon amour, Lingchi)

9. The Viewers/Readers’ Perspectives (3) Questions: • What is the connection between the 四川、Haiti earthquakes, the flood and Mustard Seed Children’s Home? • Is sympathy possible? • Is being a sympathetic witness enough? • Reading can involve action; critical reading is critical practice (with a purpose to change)

10. First EMOTIONAL Responses 1) Lack of control textbook chap 11 p. 4 – A. 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  give up trying (e.g. stay put) • C. Thinking under Stress -- worrying or ruminating -- intrusive thoughts of the trauma  Action not Thought (oversimplified decision; poor judgment) source

11. First ”Physical” Responses – 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. 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   paranoia of Cameron, The Stunt Man • B. Isolation; loss of contact tendency to isolate oneself (e.g. Emmet, In Country) • 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

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

14. 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; • (social denial e.g. Hollywood’s reconstruction of the Rambo myth; consumption of disaster 災區一日遊) • attempts to avoid anything associated with trauma • increased need to control everyday experiences source

15. Post-Traumatic Syndrome – Acting-Out of Trauma textbook chap 11 pp. 9-10 • 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?鴉片系統). • Traumatic Reenactment (repetition compulsion) acting out, repeating the action without knowing it. • Trauma-Bonding (staying with an abusive husband) •   Working-Through of Trauma Endorphin: a chemical naturally released in the brain to reduce pain, and which in large amounts can make you feel relaxed and/or energetic.

16. Trauma and Modernity • WWI: a war on the mind; WWII: a war in the mind (194) • 3 stories: Freud’s, Benjamin’s (~1940) and Woolf (~1941) • Freud: a Jewish’s person’s (or everyone’s) identity is founded on trauma (of patricide, or Oedipus complex)  war vet’s repetition compulsion (trauma is the “alien” in one’s self) • Benjamin: the shock of Modernity actively comprehended thru’ fragments (after-image p. 272)

17. Trauma and History • 3 stories: Freud’s, Benjamin’s (~1940) and Woolf (~1941) • Woolf: personal traumas of death and sexual abuse  “scene-making” in “A Sketch of the Past” (1939~) (note: Blitz as a factor of her suicide) Many of the scenes Woolf remembers, she writes, “brought with them a peculiar horror and a physical collapse; they seemed dominant; myself passive.” (199) Experience that cannot be comprehended.

18. Trauma and History • 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 12: 203; chap 13) • 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

19. 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).

20. How is trauma related to globalization?A Summary • (post-)Modernity itself can be shocking.  traumatizing or numbing • Many historical traumas (e.g. Holocaust; Vietnam War; 911) have to do with colonial powers and their racial/cultural oppression and resistance to it. • Anti-Globalization (corporate-driven globalization; resistance to U.S. government, to the West, to ‘McWorld’) in the form of “terrorism”; • News broadcast bring traumas for our “daily consumption” • Economic crises and some natural disasters – interconnected • Foxconn – 11 suicide jumps

21. Works Cited • Wolfreys, Julian, ed. Introducing Criticism at the 21st Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2002. • E. Ann Kaplan and Ban Wang. “From Traumatic Paralysis to the Force Field of Modernity.” Trauma and cinema: Cross-Curltural Explorations. Eds. E. Ann Kaplan and Ban Wang.Hong Kong UP, 2004.