Michelle Balaev. 2014. 1 Literary Trauma Theory Reconsidered. In: Michelle Balaev, ed. Contemporary Approaches in Literary Trauma Theory. Pallgrave MacMillan, pp. 1-14.
Ron Eyerman. 2019. Memory, Trauma, and Identity. Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Neil J. Smelser. 2004. Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma. In: Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkley, California: University of California Press pp. 31-59.
Article Review
In these selected chapters, Michelle Balaev, Ron Eyerman, and Neil J Smelser focus on literary trauma theory and cultural trauma theory to describe the importance and necessity of trauma writing. Though these chapters are found in different books on trauma theory, one can utilize these sources in order to develop and explicate cultural trauma and how it can be applied to the new pluralistic model of literary trauma theory that Balaev introduces in her chapter.
Balaev’s chapter sets out to define what literary trauma theory includes and how it has since evolved from its classic model into a more pluralistic one. The pluralistic literary trauma theory model introduced in Balaev’s chapter gives survivors agency over their own stories and allows for a wide breadth of experiences to be recorded. While working to introduce readers to what literary trauma theory refers to, Balaev makes use of previous scholarship to first define what contemporary definitions of literary trauma theory is not. While citing Cathy Caruth and Sigmond Freud, Balaev, makes the claim that the previous ways in which trauma, specifically trauma writing, has been viewed by scholars and so-called “experts” in the field is not only deeply flawed, but embedded within it is too great of an importance on dissociation from a traumatic event. Balaev describes the removal of the survivor’s agency surrounding a traumatic event through dissociation as paradoxical— though survivors are the ones that have directly experienced the traumatic event, according to the classic theory, they have the “absolute inability to know it[1], thus, restricting the variability of trauma.
What Balaev wants to be most understood about literary trauma theory, and in turn, trauma writing, is that although a survivor may have had little agency in the moment of the traumatic event, there is variability in trauma and its definition and representations; it is not only unfair to make the claim that survivors must dissociate and not recognize their own trauma for it to be legitimate, but factually incorrect.
However, Balaev’s chapter does not set out to provide examples and further explain what it means to be affected by these models of literary trauma theory. Though they consider previous definitions as well as the works of former scholars, this chapter does little to add to the conversation on what is trauma writing and how the pluralistic model of literary trauma theory allows for trauma writing to even be possible. Balaev also does not describe the important connections between trauma and memory; though they begin to discuss the numerous ways that trauma may be expressed, stating that it is much more than dissociation, they fail to bring up more examples that combat Caruth’s classic theory.
Where Balaev falls short, however, Ron Eyerman and Neil J Smelser pick up the difference, which is why I chose to look at chapters by these scholars as well. Balaev’s chapter works as a great introduction to the much more thorough and meticulous ones by Eyerman and Smelser.
Working to define memory and cultural trauma, Eyerman calls upon Smelser in his book in order to create the current definition for cultural trauma, stating that cultural trauma occurs “when members of a collectivity feel that they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identities in fundamental and irrevocable ways”[2]. Eyerman, who is trained as a sociologist, focuses most of his research in this book around African American literature and the experience that being enslaved has had generationally. What is so significant about Eyerman’s work, is their chronological approach to trauma— beginning with cultural trauma, they systemically delineate the process of moving from event, to memory, to the formation of a new identity that sets out to redefine the group or person. Eyerman expounds upon his and Smelser’s definition of cultural trauma by using it to explain how there is a difference in which perpetrators and survivors respond to trauma and how the process in which these groups understand and acknowledge trauma still is dynamic, changing continuously.
Although Eyerman, quite literally, wrote the book on cultural trauma, within it there is oftentimes too much responsibility placed upon survivors to find new meaning within their trauma and forgive the perpetrators. Eyerman gives too much credit to perpetrators, with options ranging from minimizing their culpability for their wrongdoings and rewriting the historical memory of an event to acknowledging said wrongdoings with the risk of disidentification from the group[3]. However, as I stated, Eyerman writes on topics such as that of the enslavement of African Americans. Though he is an outsider to this community, he has found justification in speaking for them in general terms of “victim” versus “perpetrator” while working to decide on what the “appropriate” response to that event should be in order to supply a basis for inter group understanding.
Out of the chapters I looked at, Neil J Smelser’s offers not only the most methodological approach to cultural trauma, but the explanations of it that I enjoy the most. Smelser’s chapter examines trauma from a psychological standpoint, making use of lists and charts to describes the ways in which trauma presents itself, both to an individual and a collective group. Smelser takes the definition they created with Eyerman and expounds upon it, adding that traumas are “made not born”[4], which, in turn, solidifies their own interpretation on the role of trauma within the literary scene— that it requires interpretation. Unlike Caruth and the classic theory, Smelser builds upon Balaev’s pluralistic model, not only considering, but demanding that the linguistic relationship between trauma should be acknowledged[5]. Smelser also furthers Eyerman’s points on the role of memory when discussing trauma, bringing up how it can be used to both memorialize as well as silence a traumatic event. Memorialization comes in various forms, and within the United States is most notable in the remembrance campaigns for 9/11. These attitudes are often not upheld when it comes to acknowledging when a nation or people has done wrong, and oftentimes we are told to “put the past behind us” in cases such as these (the enslavement of African Americans, the controversy surrounding Holocaust memorials)[6].
At the beginning of their chapter, Smelser describes its limitations, reminding readers that it is a chapter on cultural trauma within a book dedicated to its study. Taking note that it is meant to be selective in nature, as well as told from a psychological perspective, the reader is already made aware of the contents and what to expect to get out of the reading. This is very much my favorite reading on cultural trauma theory. Smelser does an excellent job of explaining theoretical points while making them accessible to an uninformed reader who may be unfamiliar with trauma theory and its writings.
What is so engaging about trauma fiction is its ability to engage readers into the ethical dilemmas of trauma. It is trauma in fiction that produces the awareness of the multidimensionality of a traumatic event, and in particular, the social influences that shape the survivor’s personality, the textual modeling of the individual’s mind, and the ability for readers to engage in a “compassionate correspondence between reader and survivor”.[7] This shift from the classic trauma theory of Caruth to the pluralistic model of newer scholars allows for the formerly described “inherently indecipherable’ to that which is not only represented through linguistics but perhaps, even, best represented through linguistics by expanding the range of values and contesting the very definition of trauma and mark the ever-expanding borders of the field of trauma writing.
[1]Michelle Balaev. 2014. 1 Literary Trauma Theory Reconsidered. In: Michelle Balaev, ed. Contemporary Approaches in Literary Trauma Theory. Pallgrave MacMillan, pg. 7
[2] Ron Eyerman. 2019 Memory, Trauma, and Identity. Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland AG pg. 3
[6] Neil J Smelser. 2004. 2 Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkley, California: University of California Press. Pg. 53