Abstract

abstract:

Malabou claims that trauma permanently punctures sociohistorical connections and creates deconstituted subjectivities that Freudian psychoanalysis cannot address. Working from her provocations, I show that Freud provides an understanding of history as essentially discontinuous and allows us to acknowledge discursive latency, which opens the way for a reevaluation of analysis as a form of historical witnessing. While Malabou denies the possibility of hope for understanding post-traumatic stress disorder survivors, I argue, along with contemporary theorists and analysts, that we have a responsibility to allow the new histories inaugurated by trauma to enter into the social narrative and stretch the boundaries of shared memory.

pdf