Narrating Trauma: Individuals, Communities, Storytelling

Abstract

Relatar el trauma: Individuos, comunidades, narrativa

Emotions, affects, and trauma in classrooms: Moving beyond the representational genre

“…Moreover, the assumption that affective communities (e.g. classrooms) can take trauma and reframe it for therapeutic purposes, treats trauma as a means to an end where everyone can be part of, regardless of their traumatic experience (Auchter, 2019). By doing so, trauma becomes a “tool” for simplification and dismisses those communities that fail to be “productive” as “emotionally incompetent or compromised” (Meiches, 2019: 242).…”

“…By doing so, trauma becomes a “tool” for simplification and dismisses those communities that fail to be “productive” as “emotionally incompetent or compromised” (Meiches, 2019: 242). Such an approach “has the effect of constraining individuals’ experiences of their trauma and emotion, and cheapening it by making it accessible to everyone” (Auchter, 2019: 279). Auchter further asks: “If trauma cannot be represented, then what must necessarily be lost in the effort to generate community-level meanings out of traumatic events, to allow those who have not experienced the events to access them in ways that are meaningful to them?” (Auchter, 2019: 279–280).…”

“…Following Auchter (2019), I would like to see more acknowledgement of the ethical struggles involved in trauma representations in classrooms. I would like to see the representational genre engaged more with the complex colonial-imperial matrix in which it is entangled so that educators problematize how students learn to “see” and “feel”—or fail to do so—through particular representational practices.…”

“…I would like to see the representational genre engaged more with the complex colonial-imperial matrix in which it is entangled so that educators problematize how students learn to “see” and “feel”—or fail to do so—through particular representational practices. Finally, I would like to see the aporias of trauma to be further highlighted in classrooms and schools, that is, the idea that trauma “may be fundamentally unrepresentable, and cannot be understood by those who have not experienced it” (Auchter, 2019: 280). As the next section discusses, the focus on representation to the detriment of non-representational dimensions may also overlook the body as a site of affective politics and transformative action.…”

“…In his critique of representational reading of trauma, Meiches (2019: 246) goes as far as questioning whether it ispolitically necessary to represent in order to sense and respond to traumatic settings, which can be as different as a loud sound at a concert, the panic of flying shrapnel on a battlefield, the dread of returning to a violent home each night […]? Are these events not sensible beyond the frame of representation in ways that produce other models or forms of affective community?Similarly, Auchter (2019: 281) wonders:[W]hy shouldn’t the community encounter the rupture at face value, rather than attempting to subsume it into already existing social structures through forms of representation and normalization. Can’t we take trauma on its own terms and legitimize the victims rather than trying to understand what cannot be understood?Representing trauma is itself a form of politics that may not always be restorative or reparative for survivors or witnesses of trauma.…”