11/26/23, "Trends in Literary Trauma Theory," Balaev

 I want to start by saying that I am a fundamentally traumatized person. I don't feel the need to recount any of my traumas to prove that, just trust me when I say this is true. 

I understand this essay as characterizing making trauma speakable as a fundamental product of healing. I don't disagree with it, but it must be informed by the fact that its subject is trauma novels. The trauma must be speakable because it has been spoken. However, I feel as though I have recovered from trauma that I cannot speak. I can point towards them (hypothetical ex: reading was made harder for me due to a traumatic experience involving my teacher in 3rd grade and now reading is not harder for me) but I cannot describe the trauma (the hypothetical traumatic experience with my 3rd grade teacher).

I feel like many progressives view trauma as unrecoverable from and unchallengeable. I can point at countless discourses or discursive techniques for this, but the one strongest in my mind is "Someone may have caused harm, but that's because of their trauma." Off the top of my head, I've heard this argument applied to: denying rights to trans women, disparaging black people, physically harming lesbians, and the application of punitive justice. I like this essay for being centrally about healing from trauma both for challenging that discursive technique and just being more hopeful than a lot of discussions around trauma.

I think my experience with trauma texts is untraditional. However, I have not been presented any normal around these texts. I think trauma texts are far less traumatizing than they are triggering. I'm willing to guess that no one else in our classroom would describe The Best At It as a trauma text, although I would not be too surprised to hear it from 2 people. It was definitely concerned with the enforcement of masculinity, and that was where I felt mild distress (I can't believe the trans woman has trauma around the enforcement of masculinity). I use "triggering" lightly: none of my experiences with trauma in what trauma texts are beyond discomfort/emotional distress.  

My favorite trauma text is In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. It's a memoir speaking on her experience of being abused by her girlfriend. It's great because it talks about queer domestic abuse without promoting the idea that queer people are more likely to be abused. Read it!

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