history
history

In search of the lost future

The ‘classical’ view of trauma is that [i] it is based on experiences which cannot be assimilated, made sense of, by the individual; and [ii] originates in the (early) past of the individual.  Of course, such a traumatic experience need not occur in infancy or childhood; Freud himself recognised that …

Isn’t ALL trauma ‘cultural’?

In a recent post I introduced Jeffery Alexander’s idea of cultural trauma which occurs when members of a social group feel they have been subjected to an horrendous event, which changes their sense of group consciousness, memory and future identity in a fundamental and irrevocable way.  What’s critical to note …

Imaginary histories?

One of the problems with any form of history, be it personal, social, or political, is how the historical narrative, the story told by the historian, relates to ‘what really happened’.  As the quotation marks suggest, the status of this ‘what really happened’ is itself problematic.  In semiotic terms we …

The traumatisation of history

It may seem a strange idea to talk about the ‘traumatisation of history’; after all how can history itself be traumatised?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to speak of the history of trauma?  For a while this is what I thought, especially in relation to writing about the Great War.  …