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Theorizing suffering? War Trauma and the Academy

Theorizing suffering? War Trauma and the Academy

Publié le par Thomas Parisot (Source : CFP)

Theorizing suffering? War Trauma and the Academy

Papers are invited for the above panel of the 'Dangerous Representations' interdisciplinary conference, University of Sussex, June 1-2 2001.

Over the course of the twentieth century, the impact of trauma has been an object of increasing scrutiny and theorization. The experiences of soldiers fighting on the front during World War One caused Freud to rethink his theory of the pleasure principle. The events of the Nazi Holocaust have demanded a radical reappraisal of models of the human subject, its capacity for suffering and for inflicting suffering. More recent conflicts, including Vietnam and the Gulf War, have brought Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to public awareness.

But behind these theorizations and diagnoses are real human individuals whose bodies and minds were irreparably mutilated by their experiences. In this panel, we want to ask how historians, literary and cultural critics, social scientists, and others in the academic community, negotiate their engagements with and theorization of representations of such experiences, and the danger of eclipsing the uniqueness and privacy of human suffering.

A further inflection of this question might be through engagement with the traumatic experiences of non-combatants physically unaffected by, but testifying to psychological and emotional damage from, war. How can we pay proper attention to such experiences without denying the distinctness of the experience of those caught up in conflict?

Particularly welcome are papers which themselves represent attempts to read texts of war trauma, as well as those which address the ethical and methodological issues raised by such questions.

Abstracts of up to 250 words by April 15th, by return of email to:
b.c.randall@sussex.ac.uk
or:
Bryony Randall
GRCH
University of Sussex
Falmer
Brighton
UK
BN1 9RH

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