Description
Book SynopsisIn
Trauma Culture, E. Ann Kaplan explores the relationship between the impact of trauma on individuals and on entire cultures and nations. Arguing that humans possess a need to draw meaning from personal experience and to communicate what happens to others, she examines the forms that are used to bridge the experience.
Trade Review"This book will have significant impact in film and media studies because Kaplan so skillfully 'translates' the most interesting work done in trauma studies and takes it in new and original directions. It is illuminating, lucid, and persuasive." -- Patrice Petro * author of Aftershocks of the New: Feminism and Film History *
"This book is an important, compelling, and timely contribution to trauma studies and film and media studies. It is an engaging read-a real page-turner-not only because of its conversational style and beautiful prose but also because it addresses some of the most complex psychological issues facing our culture today." -- W. Alton Jones * Vanderbilt University *
"Kaplan offers a rich yet concise discussion of trauma culture from objective and personal perspectives, without sacrificing scholarly rigor. Memory, mourning, testimony, and witnessing are key terms, but the book's special strength is Kaplan's expert discussion of film and the media and the ways in which they position spectators. A first-rate, sophisticated introduction to the field. Highly recommended." * Choice *
Table of ContentsIntroduction : 9/11 and "disturbing remains"
"Why trauma now?" : Freud and trauma studies
Memory as testimony in World War II : Freud, Duras, and Kofman
Melodrama and trauma : displacement in Hitchcock's Spellbound
Vicarious trauma and "empty" empathy : media images of Rwanda and the Iraq War
"Translating" trauma in postcolonial contexts : indigeneity on film
The ethics of witnessing : Maya Deren and Tracey Moffatt
Epilogue : "Wounded New York" : rebuilding and memorials to 9/11
