Download Week 4 quesitons on readings (required)

Select quotations and questions for the
Trauma and Global Literature Colloquium, Week 4
Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” Chapter 1 of Alexander, Jeffrey C.,
Eyerman, Ron, et. al. eds, Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkeley, Calif: University
of California Press, 2004.
Quotation 1: "Experiencing trauma" can be understood as a sociological process
that defines a painful injury to the collectivity, establishes the victim, attributes
responsibility, and distributes the ideal and material consequences. Insofar as traumas are
so experienced, and thus imagined and represented, the collective identity will become
significantly revised. This identity revision means that there will be a searching reremembering of the collective past, for memory is not only social and fluid but deeply
connected to the contemporary sense of the self. Identities are continuously constructed
and secured not only by facing the present and future but also by reconstructing the
collectivity's earlier life. (22)
Question: Does this conception of the link between cultural trauma and “identity
revision” (of a collectivity) contribute anything to the way in which we think about
literatures that represent traumatic injuries to a collectivity?
Quotation 2: Imagination informs trauma construction just as much when the
reference is to something that has actually occurred as to something that has not. It is only
through the· imaginative process of representation that actors have the sense of
experience. Even when claims of victimhood are morally justifiable, politically democratic,
and socially progressive, these claims still cannot be seen as automatic, or natural,
responses to the actual nature of an event itself. To accept the constructivist position in
such cases may be difficult, for the claim to verisimilitude is fundamental to the very sense
that a trauma has occurred. Yet, while every argument about trauma claims ontological
reality, as cultural sociologists we are not primarily concerned with the accuracy of social
actors' claims, much less with evaluating their moral justification. We are concerned only
with how and under what conditions the claims are made, and with what results. It is
neither ontology nor morality, but epistemology, with which we are concerned. (9)
Question: Alexander suggests that “claims of victimhood” should not be subjected, at
least not by cultural sociologists, to scrutiny of their implicit truth claims. Instead, he prefers
to focus only on their contexts and consequences. Does the nature of the trauma itself matter,
and are all groups entitled to claims of traumatization? Would we ever think in terms of a
hierarchy of traumatization (or suffering)?
Quotation 3: For traumas to emerge at the level of the collectivity, social crises
must become cultural crises. Events are one thing, representations of these events quite
another. Trauma is not the result of a group experiencing pain. It is the result of this acute
discomfort entering into the core of the collectivity's sense of its own identity. Collective
actors "decide" to represent social pain as a fundamental threat to their sense of who they
are, where they came from, and where they want to go. In this section, I lay out the
processes that form the nature of these collective actions and the cultural and institutional
processes that mediate them. (10)
Question: What is the significance of the distinction Alexander makes between “social
crises” and “cultural crises”? What is the role of literature, at least potentially, in the
formation of “the collectivity’s sense of its own identity”?
Quotation 4: Insofar as meaning work takes place in the aesthetic realm, it will be
channeled by specific genres and narratives that aim to produce imaginative identification
and emotional catharsis. (15) [Note—Please see, on page 16, the brief discussion of The
Diary of Anne Frank and of an ethnographer’s description of the use of theater to confront
the past in a Guatemalan town.]
Question: Are some genres and narrative forms better suited than others to the
representation of trauma? Do claims made on behalf of literature that it promotes healing
carry with them a risk worth worrying about?
Quotation 5: The elements of the trauma process I have outlined in this section can
be thought of as social structures, if we think of this term in something other than its
materialist sense. Each element plays a role in the social construction and deconstruction
of a traumatic event. Whether any or all of these structures actually come into play is not
itself a matter of structural determination. It is subject to the unstructured, unforeseeable
contingencies of historical time. A war is lost or won. A new regime has entered into power
or a discredited regime remains stubbornly in place. Hegemonic or counter publics may be
empowered and enthusiastic or undermined and exhausted by social conflict and
stalemate. Such contingent historical factors exercise powerful influence on whether a
consensus will be generated that allows the cultural classification of trauma to be set firmly
in place. (24)
Question: Alexander seems to acknowledge that despite his taxonomic efforts,
whether or not a particular historic event is classified as traumatic depends not upon, or at
least not only upon, the nature of the event, but rather on “the unstructured, unforeseeable
contingencies of historical time.” Should literature be considered one of those contingencies,
and perhaps a privileged one? In other words, does literature play a foundational role in the
recognition of cultural trauma?
2
Paul Thompson, “History and the Community,” Chapter 1 of The Voice of the Past. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000.
Jeremy Metz, “Excerpt of an interview with Yanick Lahens.” 2012
Quotation 1: Among refugee peoples such as the Palestinians or the Guatemalans
the aim of [oral history] projects has been to help people hold onto and sustain their
culture through recording it. The documenting of American Indian traditional hunting and
land rights through oral evidence, which has been increasingly used in legal battles, is
typically intended to be more actively restorative of a lost past… By contrast the oral
history projects which have helped to give Brazilian shanty-town dwellers the confidence
to mobilize and demand recognition of their landholding and basic services such as water
and electricity, because they are concerned with the needs of new settlements, have
focused much more on the moral dynamic of change through migration and on
mythologized justifications of their present tenure. (2)
Question 1: Jeremy Metz’s interview with Yanick Lahens highlights ‘memory blancs,’
gaps in the memory that are difficult to access or retrieve because of trauma. Despite the
implications of ‘memory blancs,’ in what ways does Lahens’ oral history ‘restore’ or
reconstruct memories of the 2010 earthquake?
Question 2: How can Lahens’ oral history help us understand trauma, and more
specifically ‘cultural crisis’ and cultural trauma?
Question 3: How can we connect Lahens’ reconstruction of the 2010 earthquake with
our earlier discussion about collective identity and/or ‘identity revision’?
Quotation 2: Since the nature of most existing records is to reflect the standpoint of
authority, it is not surprising that the judgment of history has more often than not
vindicated the wisdom of the powers that be. Oral history by contrast makes a much fairer
trial possible: witnesses can now also be called from the under-classes, the unprivileged,
and the defeated. It provides a more realistic and fair reconstruction of the past, a challenge
to the established account. (7)
Question 1: Thompson finds it problematic that the ‘self-selected group’ (those
individuals interviewed) will rarely be representative of a community. He also adds: “Local
history drawn from a more restricted social stratum tends to be more complacent, a reenactment of community myth” (22). In light of this, do you agree with Thompson’s assertion
that “[oral history] provides a more realistic and fair reconstruction of the past?”
Question 2: The ‘inaccessibility’ of some memories can perhaps lend a kind of
unreliability (or instability) to the reconstruction or retelling of a traumatic experience. How
does the excerpt from Metz’s interview with Lahens challenge or reinforce Thompson’s
assertion that “[oral history] provides a more realistic and fair reconstruction of the past?”
3
Quotation 3: For the co-operative nature of the oral history approach has led to a
radical questioning of the fundamental relationship between history and the community.
Historical information need not be taken away from the community for interpretation and
presentation by the professional historian. Through oral history the community can and
should be given the confidence to write its own history. (17)
Question 1: What does Lahens’ oral history illustrate about the relationship between
history and the community?
Question 2: What kind of historical gaps does Lahens’ oral history potentially fill?
How does Lahens’ oral history ‘widen its scope’ (23).
Quotation 4: [Oral history] is about individual lives – and any life is of interest. And
it depends upon speech, not upon the much more demanding and restricted skill of writing.
Moreover, the tape recorder not only allows history to be taken down in spoken words but
also to be presented through them….The use of a human voice, fresh, personal, particular,
always brings the past into the present with extraordinary immediacy… Recordings
demonstrate the rich ability of people of all walks of life to express themselves. .. The tape
recorder has allowed the speech of ordinary people – their narrative skill for example – to
be seriously understood for the first time. (20)
Question 1: If we were to not only listen but ‘read’ the texture of Lahens’ voice, what
do we notice about her narrative that might not be captured in text?
Question 2: What does Lahens’ oral history reveal about the telling or sharing of a
traumatic experience (i.e. ‘spoken words’) versus trauma writing?
4