5.2 Editorial – Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies

Legacies of Trauma: The Tragedy of Before and After (Editors’ Note)

Deeksha Suri | Khalsa College University of Delhi | ORCiD ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-2977-9543

Faizan Moquim | Jamia Milia Islamia | ORCiD ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7698-1656

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Excerpt | The genesis of enquiries into trauma in academia can be traced back to the last few decades of the twentieth century where particular circumstances and implications of trauma were studied with reference to wars, postcolonialism, political and social tragedies as well as feminist studies. The etymology of the word trauma, from the root “√trau,” refers to hurt through “twisting” or “piercing” that later comes to be associated with “a sense of psychic wound,” a self-shattering experience of violence or harm (Harper). The foundational claims of trauma’s conceptualizations primarily understand it as an experience that is overwhelming and yet fails to register itself as an “experience” in the first place. Caruth explains traumatic experience as something that “does not simply serve as record of the past but precisely registers the force of an experience that is not yet fully owned” (151). It is unintelligible—“not yet fully owned”—because it cannot be integrated into consciousness and remains absent as the conscious memory fails to encode the traumatic event, thereby indicating an elision.

Key words | Trauma, Memory, Representation, Narrative, Truth, Collective Memory, Violence, Life Writing, Testimony, Agency

Deeksha Suri (deeksha.suri80@gmail.com)

Faizan Moquim (faizan.moquim@vips.edu)

MLA Citation for this Article:

Suri, Deeksha and Faizan Moquim. “Legacies of Trauma: The Tragedy of Before and After (Editors’ Note).” Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 15 Sep. 2022, pp. v-ix, https://doi.org/10.71106/SVKF9783.