The Trauma Question

by Roger Luckhurst

In this book, Roger Luckhurst both introduces and advances the fields of cultural memory and trauma studies, tracing the ways in which ideas of trauma have become a major element in contemporary Western conceptions of the self. The Trauma Question outlines the origins of the concept of trauma across psychiatric, legal and cultural-political sources from the 1860s to the coining of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in 1980. It further explores the nature and extent of ‘trauma culture’ from 1980 to the present, drawing upon a range of cultural practices from literature, memoirs and confessional journalism through to photography and film. The study covers a diverse range of cultural works, including writers such as Toni Morrison, Stephen King and W. G. Sebald, artists Tracey Emin, Christian Boltanski and Tracey Moffatt, and film-makers David Lynch and Atom Egoyan. The Trauma Question offers a significant and fascinating step forward for those seeking a greater understanding of the controversial and ever-expanding field of trauma research.

Genres: Nonfiction, Theory, Academia

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Roger Luckhurst is a British writer and academic. He is Professor in Modern and Contemporary Literature in the Department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London and was Distinguished Visiting Professor at Columbia University in 2016. He works on Victorian literature, contemporary literature, Gothic and weird fiction, trauma studies, and speculative/science fiction.

Reviews

[Noha]

3.5 - 4
This book is I think the most comprehensive and brilliantly researched piece about the genealogy of trauma and its paradigm in literature, photography and the cinema. It gives very insightful analyses and examples. Its introduction and afterwords are the best, but most of the content in the middle has been difficult to grasp unless you're a pro in the field, at least for me.

[Peter Landau]

I was hoping to understand the proliferation of trauma but mostly got a history of its origin and uses across disciplines in academic prose that’s not reader-friendly. Interesting but a slog for me. The book earned its stars with an afterwards that brought up resilience, not as an anomaly, but ballast to the knee-jerk identification with trauma. That may be traumatic to some but for me it’s a life-saver.

[Ilisa Crow]

In depth and up to date with current research.

[Emma-Louise Ekpo]

Loved this book, found it insightful, current and extremely relevant to trauma studies. I can only hope we get a part 2.