Trauma
& Representation
(next time –trauma “management” and
media representation)
Outline
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Definitions (Review): Definitions and Issues
Psychological Responses
Issues in Representation
Reader’s Positions
Examples – Lingchi (《凌遲考》) 陳界仁 ;
Blue Skies -- Ann Marie Fleming.
Next week
References
Trauma – Definitions & Issues
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1.
2.
(1. a bodily wound 外傷, 損傷) 2. a wound, a breach
on the mind 精神創傷; --not fully known,
comprehended or assimilated at the moment.
Of victims; of surviving witness; of all of us; of
history’s im/possibility of referentiality.
Issues:
Surviving – symptoms of shock, dissociation,
fragmentation, guilt and loss; paralysis or identity reconstruction
Representation: delayed appearance; doubleness
and disjunction (between the past/dead & the
present/alive; the victims and the reader. (p. 7)
Psychological Responses
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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.
Psychological Responses -- Freud’s theories
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1.
2.
3.
(to prepare you for the reading of Chang’s article) –pp. 97 – 100
Three models in Freud’s theory of psyche –
economic, topological and dynamic
The economic model (能量流通)—Repression at
the moment and return later with its full impact
known; e.g. sexual harassment.
Topological model (地形﹔拓僕) -- 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 people’s
monotheism.
Psychological Responses -- Freud’s theories (2)
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different causes of trauma:
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external—train accident, war, sexual abuse;
internal—Oedipal crisis, fear of castration and absence of
the mother
Responses –
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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 mother’s lack of phallus/power) In
Chang’s words, 視而不見 (pp. 102-103)
Issues in Representation
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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.
Issues in Representation (2)
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Beyond complete comprehension and direct
referentiality -- Caruth p. 56
The film’s use of a story from John Hersey’s
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.”
Issues in Representation (3) --from psyche
to representation –
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from psychic screen to photography and TV
screen (to prepare you for the reading of Chang’s
article)
The article’s 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.
Issues 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.
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2.
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mirror image in the Imaginary order (of the three orders, the
Imaginary, the Symbolic and the real「真實」--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.
The Viewers/Readers’ Perspectives
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Four main positions in viewing trauma films
(Kaplan pp. 9-10)
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2.
the position of being introduced to trauma in
a film which ends with a comforting ‘cure.’
(e.g. disaster films, Vietnam war films such
as In Country.)
The position of being vicariously
traumatized; (e.g. Videodrome, The Fly by
David Cronenberg)
The Viewers/Readers’ Perspectives (2)
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The position of a voyeur –of films and TV
programs which turn others traumas into
spectacles.
The position of a witness. (Being there and not
there; aware of the distance.) “This position of
‘witness’ may open up a space of transformation of
the viewer through the empathic identification
without vicarious traumatization. . . . It is the
unusual, anti-narrative process of the narration
that is itself transformative in inviting the viewer to
be at once emotionally there . . . but also to keep a
cognitive distance and awareness denied to victim
by the traumatic process.” (e.g. Hiroshima mon
amour, Lingchi)
The Viewers/Readers’ Perspectives (3)
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Is sympathy possible?
Is being a sympathetic witness enough?
Reading can involve action; critical reading
is critical practice (with a purpose to change)
《凌遲考》Lingchi—Echoes of a
Historical Photograph 陳界仁 2002
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《凌遲》-- A historical photo from Georges Bataille’s
《情慾的淚水》(Les Larmes d`Eros) , 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:
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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.
《凌遲考》--camera’s perspective?
13:00--
《凌遲考》--camera’s perspective?
《凌遲考》--camera’s perspective?
17:00--
《凌遲考》--the viewers of Ching
Dynasty? Or Taiwanese workers?
《凌遲考》--the viewers of Ching
Dynasty? Or Taiwanese workers?
The Tortured –in a trance?
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The Actual Screening Site
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With three screens – why?
The Actual Screening Site
The Actual Screening Site
The Actual Screening Site –the Sea upside
down?
The Other Historical Images
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(Ref. 孫）
The historical remains(廢墟) of
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The Yuan-ming Garden from Ching Dynasty 清朝
圓明園
A bio-chemical laboratory(人體生化實驗室) in the
North-East region of China
A factory in Taiwan 工廠
The prison in Green Island (綠島政治犯監獄)
The Other Historical Sites
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The Other Historical Sites (2)
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The lab or a factory?
《凌遲考》Lingchi -- Interpretations?
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2.
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Starting from two holes on a photo –punctum (穿
刺點)
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 converging—like the
sea upside down.
Blue Skies 2002
Ritual of surviving trauma and
Acceptance of difference cultures.
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Blue 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.
Next week
Trauma –
 “Management” and Survival,
Agency (action);
 Media & Photographic
Representation
Reference
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E. Ann Kaplan and Ban Wang. “From Traumatic
Paralysis to the Force Field of Modernity.” Trauma
and cinema: Cross-Curltural Explorations. Eds. E.
Ann Kaplan and Ban Wang.Hong Kong UP, 2004.
《典藏今藝術》，129期，6月，2003。
劉紀蕙，〈『現代性』的視覺詮釋︰陳界仁的歷史肢解與死亡鈍感〉，
<http://www.ncu.edu.tw/~eng/csa/journal/journal_park63.htm>
孫立銓，〈演譯陳界仁的新作影片《凌遲考》〉
〈國家歷史意識？後殖民意識？再演繹陳界仁的影片《凌遲考》〉
unpublished paper.