Post-traumatic culture : injury and interpretation in the nineties
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Post-traumatic culture : injury and interpretation in the nineties
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998
- : hard
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The author argues that the concept of trauma has shaped some of the central narratives of the 1990s - from the war stories of Vietnam veterans to the video farewells of Heaven's Gate cult members. He explores the uses of trauma as both enabling fiction and explanatory tool during times of cultural change. Farrell's investigation begins in late-Victorian England, when physicians invented the clinical concept of "traumatic neurosis" for an era that routinely categorized modern life as sick, degenerate and stressful. He sees similar developments at the end of the 20th century as the Vietnam war and feminism returned the concept to prominence as "post-traumatic stress syndrome". Seeking to understand the psychological dislocation associated with these two periods, Farrell analyzes conflicts produced by dramatic social and economic changes and suddenly expanded horizons. He locates parallels between the cultural fantasies of the 1890s in novels and stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde, and novels and films of the 1990s that explore such issues as child sexual abuse, domestic violence, unemployment, racism and apocalyptic rage.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Trauma as Interpretation of Injury
Part I: The Sorrows of the Gay Nineties
Chapter 1. Traumatic Heroism
Chapter 2. Empty Treasure: Sherlock Holmes in Shock
Chapter 3. Post-Traumatic Mourning: Rider Haggard in the Underworld
Chapter 4. Traumatic Prophecy: H.G.Wells at the End of Time
Chapter 5. Post-Traumatic Style: Oscar Wilde in Prison
Part II: Trauma as Story in the 1990s
Chapter 6. Thinking Through Others: Prosthetic Fantasy and Trauma
Chapter 7. Abuse as a Prosthetic System
Chapter 8. Traumatic Triumph in a Black Childhood
Chapter 9. Traumatic Economies in Schindler's List
Chapter 10. Traumatic Romance / Romantic Trauma
Chapter 11. Berserk in Babylon
Chapter 12. Amok at the Apocalypse
Epilogue
Notes
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
