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trauma

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is a burden that all of the soul's elasticity and all of freedom's energy cannot lift.

It is frightful when, right from childhood, a person's consciousness has acquired a burden that all of the soul's elasticity and all of freedom's energy cannot lift.

is a character of all events. Either an event is traumatic or it does not happen.

An event is traumatic or it does not happen, does not arrive [Un evenement esttraumatique ou il n arrive pas].'

is a condition constituted in two non-traumatic events... first, the early event (which was not intrinsically traumatic because one was too young to process it) and a second event (which also was not traumatic) but triggered the memory which was retrospectively given a traumatic meaning.

More specifically, according to the temporal logic of what Freud called Nachträglichkeit, or 'deferred action,' trauma was constituted by a relationship between two events or experiences a first event that was not necessarily traumatic because it came too early in the child's development to be understood and assimilated, and a second event that also was not inherently traumatic but that triggered a memory of the first event that only then was given traumatic meaning and hence repressed. . . . 'For Freud, trauma was thus constituted by a dialectic between two events, neither of which was intrinsically traumatic, and a temporal delay or latency through which the past was available only by a deffered act of understanding and interpretation.' (Leys, Ruth. Trauma: A genealogy)

is a condition tied to memory oriented not backward to what happened, but turned toward what is coming, what is arriving, what is happening tomorrow.

For Derrida, the issue of trauma is never one of simple recollection,given that trauma disconcerts all our usual understandings of forgettingand memory. '11emory is not just the opposite of forgetting . . . tothink rnemory or to think anamnesis, here. is to think things as paradoxicalas the memory of a past that has not been present, thememory of the future-the movement of memory as tied to the futu reand not only to the past, memory turned toward the promise, towardwhat is coming, what is arriving, what is happening tomorrow( l 995b, 383 ). We're not very far here from Archive Fever's ruminationson Freud, tor Moses and Monotheis1n is precisely about self-obliteratingtrauma as welJ as che remembering of something that is to happencornorrow-a future anterior recollection of a messianic, apocalyptic,or traumatic memory that defies the arrow of Aristotelian time. It is adefiance that students o[ rrauma studies have not yet recognized(Cathy Caruth among chem), given that chey lack che prognosticativehorizon of a speculative or intuitive Lime that belongs to the opennessof the future, say, a messianic openness that resist Caruth's aporeticstructures ( 1996). Given that, as Sandra Bloom's informative bookCreating Sanctuary ( 1997) shows, trauma studies are in large partbeholden to behavioral, biological. and criminological models of adapcationto srress. such studies are also hostage to a scientific understandingthat is, in essence, blind to the kind of trau1na and science thatDerrida is considering, since for Sandra Bloom and her colleagues inthe applied sciences. the fu ture stakes its claim on very finite pragn1aticdiscoveries thac are meant co bring trauma and ics social hiscory toclosure: the extermination or eradication of trauma. That there is therepetition of an interminable death wish should not escape notice.2Of course, when Derrida thinks about craun1a, he is already close tothe idea of a Jewish science that does not extricate itself from a notionof futuricity that has an extremely ambivalent if not undecidable horizon,namely, the undeterminability of trauma, messianism, apocalypse,but also Holocaust as distinct moments or futures. Indeed, ananalogous and not unfamiliar opening in this horizon is suicide, somethingthat ended the lives of both Benjamin and Celan. That trauma

is a mental poisoning whose toxic effects are overcome only by welcoming in the foreign body and granting it citizenship.

Freud and Breuer speak of the memory of the trauma as a 'foeing body' tha continues to have a toxic effect on the patient, and it was the function of traditional medical catharsis to expel foreign bodies. But the idea of the traumatic memory as a 'foreign body' is itself part of the conception of discharge: it does not help to explain tit. Indeed, if one asks what basiss there could be for regarding any memory as a foreing body, the only reason that emerges is that these memories are split off from consciousness. These traumatic memories are alien to consciousness, and it is in large part due to their remaining conscious that they are able to have a pathological effect. But if a memory's remaining without citizenship in the land of consciousness is the basis for considering it a 'foreign body,' then the metaphor of a 'foreign body' should not suggest discharge, but an opening up of the borders. For it is only by welcoming the foreign body into consciousness, by granting it citizenship that its toxic effects are overcome. (lear 'Love and its place in nature : 34)

is a narrative which has emerged into a powerful force in the world, the anthropological stance toward which is to explore how ideas emerge in a society and come to be seen as true, and to examine what follows from that truth, without asking whether those ideas are in fact true.

what impact the emergence of the trauma narrative has had upon the world. This, they argue, is the anthropological stance: to ask how ideas emerge in a society and come to be seen as true, and what follows from that truth, without asking whether those ideas are in fact true. Because of this stance, the book will be read as provocative... but it should be read, because the authors have something to say.'

is a situation where a fundamental injury is perceived to have broached some sacred value, thus threatening the social order and demanding that emotional, institutional, and symbolic reparation and reconstitution be made.

socially mediated attribution' whereby a claim is made about some fundamental injury, an exclamation of terrifying profanation of some sacred value, a narrative about a horribly destructive social process, and a demand for emotional, institutional, and symbolic reparation and reconstitution' (Alexander 'Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma')

is a wound or breach in the mind's experience of time... a traumatic event is experienced too early (or too soon) to be fully known or understood and therefore is unavailable to consciousness.

Freud's theory of trauma in Beyond the Pleasure Principle suggests that we do not experience the traumatic event the first time around but only later through its repetition, it's suggests therefore a certain temporal belatedness. For Freud, trauma is a wound or breach in the minds experience of time... a violent traumatic event is experienced too early, too soon, to be fully known or understood and therefore is unavailable to consciousness. The traumatic event can only be known as it imposes itself, repeatedly, through the nightmares and repetitive actions of the survivor.'

trauma, n.Memes

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