trauma

writing

nationality

American

is an event without witnesses, unsymbolized, unintegrated into normal memory but it was experienced a moment too late, before the self was there to mediate it.

For Caruth, the traumatic experience cannot be represented because it occurred before its recipient was prepared to know it. Or as Caruth puts it, deeply traumatic experiences are events without witnesses, experienced a moment too late, before the self was there to mediate it. As a result, the trauma remains unsymbolized, unintegrated into normal memory

is an experience so intensely painful that the mind is unable to process it normally. In the immediate aftermath, the victim may totally forget the event. And if memories of the trauma return, they are often nonverbal, and the victim may be unable to describe them with words.

For Caruth, trauma is an experience so intensely painful that the mind is unable to process it normally. In the immediate aftermath, the victim may totally forget the event. And if memories of the trauma return, they are often nonverbal, and the victim may be unable to describe them with words.

is an experience that keeps returning, yet remains inaccessible to conscious knowing... at the same time, it leads to loss of language and therefore necessarily resist narrativization and interpretation.

For Caruth, trauma is an experience that keeps returning, yet remains inaccessible to conscious knowing... at the same time, it leads to loss of language and therefore necessarily resist narrativization and interpretation. From a postcolonial perspective, Caruth's theorization of trauma has been found problematic in its abstract and 'unsayable' causation of trauma rather than a historically concrete, knowable, external causation. This lack of historical particularity sits uneasily with postcolonialism's eponymous focus on historical, political and socio-economic factors in processes of colonization and decolonization.

is not a symptom of the unconscious but of history. It is an unassimilated experience so cannot be possessed in the forms of memory or narrative.

For Caruth, trauma is not a symptom of the unconscious but of history. The experience of trauma has not yet been assimilated by the individual and so cannot be possessed in the forms of memory or narrative. On the contrary, trauma assumes a haunting quality, continuing to possess the subject with its insistent repetitions and returns. In 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' (1920), Freud observes of the shell-shocked soldiers who suffer battle nightmares: 'The impression they give is of being pursued by a malignant fate or possessed by some 'daemonic' 'power' (Freud 1991, XI: 292).

is that which gives us to ourselves, and then to each other.

Writing is worthwhile because it gives us to ourselves, and then to each other. (Cathleen Rountree)

Cathy Caruth

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Cathy Caruth