The Open Wound: Trauma, Identity, and Community

by Frank Seeburger

A sustained philosophical reflection on trauma and recovery, this work is an original contribution to contemporary trauma studies, integrating material from psychology, sociology, history, literary studies, biography, and fiction. It addresses trauma as an open wound that cannot be closed over without festering. Distorted by trauma, we automatically react by trying to draw away from it, as we do from all pain. Trying to close the wound, cover it, and secure ourselves against further wounding, we strive to preserve our identity in the face of the blows that would shatter it. Inevitably, however, such reactive efforts only distort us even more painfully. Genuine recovery requires that instead of struggling to avoid our wounds we turn toward them, opening ourselves to the very way they so painfully split us open. Then we may find to our surprise that the open wound of trauma also opens, perhaps for the very first time, upon the real possibility of building a truly universal, all-inclusive, human community, one in which each and every one of us is allowed to be just who we are.In addition to investigating the impact of trauma upon identity and community, the book gives serious attention to such topics the politics of trauma; trauma and sovereignty; trauma, memory, and memorials; the meaning of trauma; trauma and history; the role of resistance in recovery from trauma; the social dimensions of trauma; and the complex connections between perpetrators and victims of trauma. Among the major historical traumas it discusses are the Nazi extermination of the Jews of Europe, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima at the end of World War II, and September 11, 2001. It integrates insights and inspiration from such sources Freud, Robert J. Lifton, Jacques Lacan, Holocaust survivor Dori Laub, and various other psychoanalysts, psychologists, and therapists; James Joyce, Pat Barker, Margueritte Duras and other novelists and fiction writers; multiple 20th and 21st century philosophers,including especially Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Jean Baudrillard, Slavoj Žižek, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jean-Louis Chrétien; historian Dominick LaCapra; literary theorists Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, and Paul Eisenstein; legal and political theorist Carl Schmitt; numerous journalists, memoirists, and essayists; the literature of survivors of the Holocaust and other major historical traumas; and diverse sources of popular culture from films to comics to music and TV.

318 pages, Paperback

First published September 14, 2012

Reviews

[Caterina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book opens up a transformative vision of hope that at first seems a paradox: that trauma can become the basis for an inclusive community of lovingkindness and mutual aid. Recognizing trauma, suffering, and death as the unavoidable fate of every human being, Dr. Seeburger shows us the truth of trauma: that life and security cannot be found in the hugely destructive, invasive, controlling powers of our contemporary world that purport to protect us, but instead are created on the ground, where people live, build, and provide places for healing. This book has changed my life. Learning to understand trauma on a personal level has been profoundly liberating, and the wider vision deeply inspires me. It was not an easy read, intellectually or emotionally. Dr. Seeburger explains his concepts carefully, but the book is conceptually dense; it took me a long time and much re-reading to complete the book, but I am very glad I persevered.

While building its case, the Open Wound explores many aspects of trauma theory, from the basic concepts of what trauma is and how trauma affects and changes its subjects, to the issues involved in media representation of trauma, how large-scale traumas are exploited to serve political ends, and how trauma affects time. I found the chapter on acceptance of death and dying ("Our Debt to the Dead") inspired, like a healing balm to the soul, especially the section entitled "The Soul's Swoon, Jean-Luc Nancy and The Prayer of Death" which is almost poetry. It offers a way to think about death that allows us to let go, allowing the dead to be dead, gently honoring and protecting them in their silence, and also to prepare ourselves to let go and ultimately surrender into our own deaths.

Dr. Seeburger weaves together an enormous array of contemporary thinkers from trauma studies, philosophy, literature, religion, and other fields. He explores the relation between trauma and sovereignty in contemporary philosophical/theological notions of a wounded, "limping" or powerless God, tied in with ancient Orthodox Christian notions of "kenosis" or the self-emptying of the wounded Christ on the cross. He writes movingly on the meaning of the crucifixion itself, that ultimate traumatic wounding unto death that gives birth to a radically new life in community, where Jesus' open wounds remain open, representing the ongoing reality of trauma in our communities today. Always deeply concerned with protecting human dignity, he draws on John Paul Yoder's notion that "what Jesus renounced is not first of all violence, but the compulsiveness of purpose that leads the strong to violate the dignity of others." His vision of "trauma community" rejects compulsion and embraces each human being as s/he is.

The author, Dr. Francis (Frank) Seeburger, recently retired after forty-one years as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver, where for ten years he was chair of the Philosophy Department and where he served two terms as Director of the Joint University of Denver-Iliff School of Theology Ph.D. Program. His other published works include Emotional Literacy; Addiction and Responsibility; and God, Prayer, Suicide and Philosophy.