met wrote: The Unspeakability of Trauma, the Unspeakability of Joy
With characteristic perspicuity, in 1996 the art critic Hal Foster noted the ambiguities involved in the theoretical elevation of the category of trauma:
On the one hand, in art and theory, trauma discourse continues the poststructuralist critique of the subject by other means, for again, in a psychoanalytic register, there is no subject of trauma; the position is evacuated, and in this sense the critique of the subject is most radical here. On the other hand, in popular culture, trauma is treated as an event that guarantees the subject, and in this psychologistic register the subject, however disturbed, rushes back as witness, testifier, survivor. Here is indeed a traumatic subject, and it has absolute authority, for one cannot challenge the trauma of another: one can believe it, can identify with it, or not.
In trauma discourse, then, the subject is evacuated and elevated at once. And in this way trauma discourse magically resolves two contradictory imperatives in culture today: deconstructive analysis and identity politics. This strange rebirth of the author, this paradoxical condition of absentee authority, is a significant turn in contemporary art, criticism, and cultural politics.
So there is so much that springs to mind when I read this I have to confine myself to one or I will never respond.
I'm perplexed by the identity politics of our age and much of what underpins it is the identification of the self through trauma and joy. Since the objective world has had its hair tussled, and pseudo-objectivity through shared cultural norms has been minced into wee little bits, what remains is the subjective "self", which is defined by....~*~badumbump*~*...the self! Holy canoli! And what is stable about the self? Well, not much, except that profound experiences tend to linger and if we fixate upon them enough, they can become pseudo-stable platforms from which to project our identity. I mean, hey, that's cool, but...not really my gig anymore. Used to be. Then I stopped feeling sorry for myself?????
The historian Dominick LaCapra, in a series of important essays on the role of trauma theory and testimonial in the writing of history, points to an uncanny parallel between contemporary theoretical and historiographical discussions of trauma and what he calls “negative theology.” What worries LaCapra is what he describes as “an important tendency in modern culture and thought to convert trauma into the occasion for sublimity, to transvalue it into a test of the self or of the group and an entry into the extraordinary. In the sublime, the excess of trauma becomes an uncanny source of elation or ecstasy” ... LaCapra goes on to claim that even such events as the Holocaust or the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki “may become occasions of negative sublimity or displaced sacralization".
... Have pain and violence and anxiety become the real, to the exclusion of all else? And what does that mean for how we listen to one another? For who we determine to be worth listening to? For what we can hear from them or deem worthy of our attention?
What I want to [raise is] ... the possibility that joy might also be the site of an unspeakable real. At the same time, I want to ask why we believe in the realness and the truth of the traumatic—its properly historical truth—but seem unable to hear joy.
But I admit joy into the discussion. Just stop hanging around depressives and you'll find people like Metacrock and my father (so Meta knows I'm speaking of him only with tremendous respect and love) who have their identities founded in the joy of coming to know Christ. This is where a lot of contemporary Christianity resides. It's not in any objective sense or necessary reality and knowledge of God. It's in one's own self-authenticating joy. And I cannot deny that reality.
But at the same time (to backtrack in the above quote), " what does that mean for how we listen to one another? For who we determine to be worth listening to? For what we can hear from them or deem worthy of our attention?"
I can find, at least, that the fruits of joy are more pleasing to dwell in. That's sufficient to at least be good to one another, and is the basis for a healthy love. So that's great! But it makes it perplexing on how to frame practical issues of society, or to deal with violations of joy-ethics.
If I hurt your feelings....should I care
Thoughts?
-sgtt