Getting Over Trauma: New Paradigms in Trauma Theory
Lead Research Organisation:
University of East London
Department Name: Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
Summary
Getting Over Trauma: New Paradigms in Trauma Theory
Susannah Radstone
This project aims to increase understanding of how personal and collective traumatic experiences are communicated to the wider world through the medium of film. Over the last fifteen years, and under the continuing impact of traumatic events such as 9/11 and ongoing revelations concerning the extent of institutional sexual abuse, humanities scholars have begun investigating how media, including film, represent to audiences experiences that stretch or even exceed capacities for comprehension. Research to date has drawn on new theories of trauma developed by psychologists. These theories propose that fragmentary images of traumatic experiences are consigned to an area of the mind to which traumatized subjects have no voluntary access. These unprocessed fragments are then understood to erupt into consciousness involuntarily, producing symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Scholars have drawn analogies between trauma victims and trauma films, suggesting that like trauma's victims, trauma films bear the invisible marks of experiences too shocking to be easily represented or remembered. Building on this analogy, film scholars have argued that trauma films place spectators in the position of witness to personal or collective trauma. But psychology argues that trauma leaves its mark by consigning fragmentary images to inaccessible parts of the mind. Film theory has to ask, then, how films can represent inaccessible images. To date, film theory has limited its study to a range of films that are directly connected with traumatic experience, assuming that it is within these films that analysts will find traces of traumatic memories in fragmentary images that impact on spectators in the process of their becoming witnesses to the testimony of trauma films.
This project expands the range of films to be included in studies of trauma cinema by exploring how films belonging to genres and styles not obviously connected with traumatic experience are associated with historical catastrophes. It investigates, also, how films about personal or collective traumas offer spectators a broader range of positions than that of witness. The project adds to our knowledge of how traumas are communicated by film and, more broadly, contributes to our understanding of the cultural means at our disposal for helping (or hindering) communities struggling to come to terms with trauma.
Getting Over Trauma: New Paradigms in Trauma Theory
Susannah Radstone
This project aims to increase understanding of how personal and collective traumatic experiences are communicated to the wider world through the medium of film. Over the last fifteen years, and under the continuing impact of traumatic events such as 9/11 and ongoing revelations concerning the extent of institutional sexual abuse, humanities scholars have begun investigating how media, including film, represent to audiences experiences that stretch or even exceed capacities for comprehension. Research to date has drawn on new theories of trauma developed by psychologists. These theories propose that fragmentary images of traumatic experiences are consigned to an area of the mind to which traumatized subjects have no voluntary access. These unprocessed fragments are then understood to erupt into consciousness involuntarily, producing symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Scholars have drawn analogies between trauma victims and trauma films, suggesting that like trauma's victims, trauma films bear the invisible marks of experiences too shocking to be easily represented or remembered. Building on this analogy, film scholars have argued that trauma films place spectators in the position of witness to personal or collective trauma. But psychology argues that trauma leaves its mark by consigning fragmentary images to inaccessible parts of the mind. Film theory has to ask, then, how films can represent inaccessible images. To date, film theory has limited its study to a range of films that are directly connected with traumatic experience, assuming that it is within these films that analysts will find traces of traumatic memories in fragmentary images that impact on spectators in the process of their becoming witnesses to the testimony of trauma films.
This project expands the range of films to be included in studies of trauma cinema by exploring how films belonging to genres and styles not obviously connected with traumatic experience are associated with historical catastrophes. It investigates, also, how films about personal or collective traumas offer spectators a broader range of positions than that of witness. The project adds to our knowledge of how traumas are communicated by film and, more broadly, contributes to our understanding of the cultural means at our disposal for helping (or hindering) communities struggling to come to terms with trauma.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Susannah Radstone (Principal Investigator) |