It remained ambiguous, this desire to understand trauma as a past event that reveals its impact only later, hence, to understand it as an event that unfolds in linear time. Deliberations on the nature of sequential traumatization have broadened this understanding, but not conclusively. Recent emphasis on the fact that subsequent developments determine psychological trauma represents a major step forward. The (still incomplete) synthesis of event/trigger on the one hand, and the subsequent interpretation of this scenario is topographic and spaced/spaced out (in the sense of phased/processual). It no longer necessarily occurs exclusively in an individual psyche but has been transferred to the reality of Others and their messages. The »Other« in this case is by no means a major abstract entity however, but rather the puzzle posed by the cryptic messages that surround us, that we strive to decipher, and that were sown by wholly concrete others (among whom we also number, in respect of our past histories).
In the face of such folly, the question arises as to what might be the point of euphorically evoking an event/trigger, when to do so demands a caesura or a wholly fresh start. Does any event able to break out of this recycling process even exist? How and why do we await it? And is not every generation perforce obliged to use ever-new frequencies to hunt down the voices imposed on it? Are we even perhaps condemned to this incessant transmission of ghosts, from one generation to the next? If so, would we not be best advised to welcome them with cries of enthusiasm – beyond the living present – and to grasp the fact that they will always pay us a visit whether we were hard on their heels or not?
THU 02.02. › 15:00 › HAU 3
POST-TRAUMATIC EUPHORIA
James Ferraro (US), Daniel Lopatin (US), Moderator: Geeta Dayal (US)
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