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Trauma i niewymowność
Trauma and Ineloquence

Author(s): Lauren Berlant
Subject(s): Social Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Law, Cognitive Psychology, Studies in violence and power
Published by: Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: trauma; ineloquence; law; testimony; mass culture;

Summary/Abstract: This is a paper about trauma and ineloquence, violence and banality, and the utopian conventions of self-expression in liberal mass society: the U.S. is the scene of the case. The essay pursues relations among the post-traumatic reparative contexts of the law, religion, therapy and popular culture, all under the sign of autobiography. These domains articulate generic conventions of self-expressivity with the formalism of selfreflective liberal personhood. They link norms of expressive denegation to genres that conventionalize, and make false equivalents among, diverse traumatic consequences. When scenes of post-traumatic ineloquence morph into modes of transformativestyle rhetoric, does the eloquent form distract from, become a mask for, or intensify the unreachable or inarticulable thought that wants to change the norms of negation? A short history of the soundtrack as a site that marks the centrality of ineloquence to traumatic expression condenses the paradox of the moment, where a post-traumatic desire to become undefensive meets up with pop banality and therapeutic cliche.

  • Issue Year: 2018
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 176-195
  • Page Count: 20
  • Language: Polish