Title: Trauma
1Trauma
- Representation
- (next time trauma and media representation)
2Outline
- Definitions (Review) Definitions and Issues
- Psychological Responses
- Issues in Representation
- Examples Lingchi (???) ??? Blue Skies --
Ann Marie Fleming. - Next week
- References
3Trauma Definitions Issues
- (1. a bodily wound ??, ??) 2. a wound, a breach
on the mind ???? --not fully known, comprehended
or assimilated at the moment. - Of victims of surviving witness of all of us
of historys im/possibility of referentiality. - Issues
- Surviving symptoms of shock, dissociation,
fragmentation, guilt and loss paralysis or
identity re-construction - Representation delayed appearance doubleness
and disjunction (between the past/dead the
present/alive the victims and the reader. (p. 7)
4Psychological Responses
- Cathy Caruth The Wound and the Voice
- Uncanny repetitions of the voice of wound.
- p. 4 . . .it is always the story of a wound that
cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to
tell us of a reality or truth that is not
otherwise available. - Two stories Tancred and Clorinda the return of
the burning child.
5Psychological Responses -- Freuds theories
- (to prepare you for the reading of Changs
article) pp. 97 100 - Three models in Freuds theory of psyche
economic, topological and dynamic - The economic model (????)Repression at the
moment and return later with its full impact
known e.g. sexual harassment. - Topological model (?????) -- trauma breaks the
protective shield against stimuli, and thus
denies the usual discharge function following the
principle of constancy? repetition compulsion. - ? extended to a general phenomenon e.g. Anxiety
as a protection signal Jewish peoples
monotheism.
6Psychological Responses -- Freuds theories (2)
- different causes of trauma
- externaltrain accident, war, sexual abuse
- internalOedipal crisis, fear of castration and
absence of the mother - Responses
- repetition compulsion,
- acceptance/sublimation of absence thru
symbolization in games (e.g. fort-da game or
peek-a-boo) and arts, - disavowal denying while admitting in forms of
fantasies and fetishism (e.g. the mothers lack
of phallus/power) In Changs words, ???? (pp.
102-103)
7Issues in Representation
- What is ethical or possible to tell.
(betrayal of the past a worry of the woman in
Hiroshima) ? indirect telling. - The past can be easily effaced in official
history, or inscribed/translated into an
anonymous/general narrative of peace, national
progress or trauma. (e.g. the death of some the
victory and liberation of others) - Through what (documentaries, archive, letters)
can we understand the past. ? impossibility of
full representation - The importance and possibility of attentive
listening across the boundaries of cultures, time
and life and death (Obasan, Hiroshima mon amour)
and survival.
With Café Casablanca as a counter-example, so is
the history of the film shooting with a Japanese
actor who cannot speak French at all.
8Issues in Representation (2)
- Beyond complete comprehension and direct
referentiality -- Caruth p. 56 - The films use of a story from John Herseys
Hiroshima. --the growth of the flowers over the
ruins seen by an injured woman. - What we see and hear, in Hiroshima mon amour,
resonates beyond what we can know and understand
but it is in the event of this incomprehension
and in our departure from sense and understanding
that our own witnessing may indeed begin to take
place.
9Issues in Representation (3) --from psyche to
representation
- from psychic screen to photography and TV screen
(to prepare you for the reading of Changs
article) - The articles question How is the collective
memory of 921 Earthquake formed (entering our
consciousness, becoming images or being
verbalized)? How do we disavow history of the
earthquake by consuming its images.
10Issues in Representation (3) --from psyche to
representation
- pp.91-92 screen memory the projection of the
memory traces in the unconscious onto images of
mass media. - Protection Freud and Benjamin screen as a
protective shield against stimuli (of psychic
injuries or in a city) - Projection and Exposure Mirror and image screen
pp. 92-93 ? tourism, infotainment and the
ghostly uncanny. - mirror image in the Imaginary order (of the three
orders, the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the
real????--traces outside the screens in the
symbolic and the imaginary) - Punctum p. 89
- Obscenity of Communication with everything
screened in front of us, and we ourselves, a
screen to be written on.
11???LingchiEchoes of a Historical Photograph
??? 2002
- ??-- A historical photo from Georges Batailles
?????(Les Larmes dEros) , taken by a French
soldier during the period of 1904-1905. - ? computer synthesized with footages of
dramatization and some other historical images.
- Implications of Lingchi
- The interrelations of punishment and discipline.
- History gets tortured and fragmented in
photos? Gets gazed at by the Western? - History of what?
- Pay attention to the images of the gazed and the
viewers, and the roles of the camera.
12???--cameras perspective?
1300--
13???--cameras perspective?
14???--cameras perspective?
1700--
15???--the viewers of Ching Dynasty? Or
Taiwanese workers?
16???--the viewers of Ching Dynasty? Or
Taiwanese workers?
17The Tortured in a trance?
18The Actual Screening Site
19The Actual Screening Site
20The Actual Screening Site
21The Actual Screening Site the Sea upside down?
22The Other Historical Images
- (Ref. ?)
- The historical remains(??) of
- The Yuan-ming Garden from Ching Dynasty ?????
- A bio-chemical laboratory(???????) in the
North-East region of China - A factory in Taiwan ??
- The prison in Green Island (???????)
23The Other Historical Sites
24The Other Historical Sites (2)
25???Lingchi -- Interpretations?
- Starting from two holes on a photo punctum (???)
- The disciplined and oppressed the viewers
(people in Ching Dynasty as well as Taiwanese
workers, the people of bio-chemical tests, etc. )
- Orientalism critiqued The traumas of
colonial/imperial history turned into
spectacles by the Western photographers/travelers.
- History -- in fragments and remains
- The traumatized beyond comprehension
- But the blood is flowing and converginglike the
sea upside down.
26Blue Skies 2002
- Ritual of surviving trauma and
- Acceptance of difference cultures.
27Blue Skies 2002
- I was blue, just as blue as could be
- Every day is a cloudy day for me.
- Then good luck came knocking at my door
- Skies were grey but they're not grey anymore.
- Blue skies smiling at me
- Nothing but blue skies do I see.
- Bluebirds singing a song
- Nothing but bluebirds all the day long.
28Next week
- Honey Pie, The groups chosen passages
- (if time allows) lt?.?????gt
29Reference
- ?????,129?,6?,2003?
- ???,lt????????????????????????gt,lthttp//www.ncu.edu
.tw/eng/csa/journal/journal_park63.htmgt - ???,lt?????????????gt
- lt?????????????????????????gt unpublished paper.