Abstract
Trauma is the second of three recent volumes Polity has issued containing previously published essays by Jeffrey Alexander that bear on cohesive topics, giving readers convenient access to material already well known in view of the author’s authority in cultural sociology and social theory. This overall project regarding “cultural trauma,” according to Alexander, was begun with a set of notable colleagues at the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford more than fifteen years ago, and found its first book-length expression in 2004 (Cultural Theory and Collective Identity by Alexander, Ron Eyerman, Bernard Giesen, Neil Smelser, and Piotr Sztompka)—which also provides the first chapter of the present compilation. The second of six chapters deals with the Holocaust (previously published in a 2009 book edited by Alexander), while the third, once again concerning the Holocaust, comes from a 2011 book edited by his colleague, Ron Eyerman, to whom the present collection is dedicated. The fourth chapter, about the barbarities committed by the Japanese military on the Chinese city of Nanking, was published in a Yale-related conference volume, whereas the fifth chapter comes from a 2009 book edited by S. Koniordos, and the final one originated in a 2007 collection concerning globalization edited by I. Rossi. Thus, all of these pieces were recent additions to Alexander’s large canon.
The point of these essays is clearly explained in the first one, reissued from the 2004 volume mentioned above. Here Alexander distinguishes ordinary conceptions of collective trauma from the type he prefers. He differentiates “lay,” “Enlightenment,” and psychoanalytic theories of trauma analysis by reference to “the naturalistic fallacy”: “First and foremost, I maintain that events do not, in and of themselves, create collective trauma. Events are not inherently traumatic. Trauma is a socially mediated attribution. This attribution may be made in real time, as an event unfolds; it may also be made before the event occurs, as an adumbration, or after the event has concluded, as a post-hoc reconstruction” (p. 13). He then refers to Benedict Anderson’s celebrated idea of “imagined communities,” positioning and distancing himself in relation to that notion, since he regards Anderson as having been mainly interested in ideological representations concocted to suit nationalistic interests. In response to “the constructivist position” common to collective trauma analysis, he says “We are concerned only with how and under what conditions the claims are made, and with what results. It is neither ontology nor morality, but epistemology, with which we are concerned” (p. 14).
He then proposes a schematic with which a researcher could interpret cultural traumas no matter where they occur historically or geographically. This is made up of “carrier groups” and “audience and situation,” plus master narratives of the event that turn on “the nature of the pain,” “the nature of the victim,” “relation of the trauma victim to the wider audience, “ and “attribution of responsibility” (pp. 14-19). Such an approach will likely be useful for students of contemporary collective trauma, as defined in these linked essays, of which there seem to be an ever-growing supply on which to try it out.