On the Nature of the Traumatogenic Event
On the Nature of the Traumatogenic Event

Summary/Abstract: Historical events, however terrible, are not in and of themselves traumatic. For a trauma to emerge at the level of a collectivity, ‘social crises must become cultural crises’ (Alexander et al., 2004, p. 10). For an historical event to become a cultural trauma, it must be socially mediated and represented, a trauma narrative must be constructed. Consequently, there is always a gap between the traumatogenic event and its representation, this gap creates the space for the ‘trauma process’. Unlike trauma theory, therefore, cultural trauma places the weight of analysis not on the historical event as such but on the narrative struggle that constitutes and sustains that event as a cultural trauma. Thus, we have a series of interrelated terms: history, trauma, narrative and memory, that pivot around an absent presence, a traumatogenic event. It is the nature of that traumatogenic event that I explore in this paper. First, I will set out my theoretical differences from trauma theory and then attempt to square the circle between a non-pathological conception of trauma in cultural trauma theory and my own commitment to psychoanalysis. In conclusion I will put forward a number of claims that I hope will be consistent with cultural trauma theory. That is to say, the traumatogenic event is not given but is retrospectively constructed and in this sense is ahistorical and non-narrative.

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