Trauma Magic

by Clementine Morrigan

Trauma Magic is a collection of essays which takes up trauma as a site of possibility. Exploring a wide range of topics, the essays in this collection value trauma and magic as legitimate embodied knowledges and ways of being in the world. "Being Good Will Never Solves the Problem Because the Problem is Not That I am Bad" explores witchcraft as a space of resistance against child abuse and sexual violence. "Can Theory Be a Spell?" considers practicing magic in the context of academia, asking which ways of knowing are valued and which are not. "Fairies in Ontario: Locality, Diaspora, and Relationship to Land" frames the Irish fairy faith as a producer of ecological ethics, and considers whether a place based faith can be practiced in the diaspora. "All Generations Will Call Me Blessed: Toward a Queer, Feminist Marian Devotion" takes up the lived faith of Marian devotion through a queer, feminist lens, and imagines Mary's ecstatic femme4femme desire. "Intoxication Spaces: Mental Maps of Substance Use" examines how our relationship to substance use can shape our relationship to the spaces we move through. "Failure to Comply: Madness and/as Testimony" uses psychiatric survivor testimony as a method to reveal and resist the coercive and carceral tactics of the psychiatric industrial complex. "Trauma Time: The Queer Temporalities of the Traumatized Mind" brings queer theory and disability theory into conversation with each other to consider how trauma can queer time. "Fucking Crazy: On Complex Trauma, Surviving Sexual Violence, and Living My Best Slut Life" uses storytelling to explore queer sexuality and bdsm in the context of trauma, disability, and unbearable pain. Together, these essays celebrate the magic of trauma survivors, and seek out the rich, generative questions trauma can push us to ask.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, LGBT, Essays, Psychology

Unknown Binding

About the author

Clementine Morrigan is a writer. She is the writer behind the zines Love Without Emergency, Fuck the Police Means We Don't Act Like Cops to Each Other, Fucking Crazy, and Fucking Girls. She also wrote the books Sexting, Fucking Magic, Trauma Magic, You Can't Own the Fucking Stars, The Size of a Bird, and Rupture. She has been writing and publishing for more than 20 years and has many more projects on the way. They are also a podcaster as one half of the podcast Fucking Cancelled and they're the creator of the popular Trauma Informed Polyamory workshop. They also teach other online workshops like Bisexual Girls with Baggage and Disorganized Attachment Is a Fucking Trip. She is an ecosocialist, an anarchist, an abolitionist, an opposer of cancel culture, a trauma educator, a sex educator, a person living with complex ptsd, a sober alcoholic, a polyamorous bisexual dyke, and a proud dog mom to Clover “the dog” Morrigan.

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

[english below]
Creo que es difícil comentar un sólo trabajo de la Clementine Morrigan porque siento que su trabajo funciona como un todo, un todo que es definitivamente mucho más que la suma de sus partes.
Esta fanzine en particular es más académica. Sin embargo, su mérito no es realmente una metodología impecable, una bibliografía extensa, una crítica minuciosa; acá lo que es potente, lo que vale la pena, es una intuición creativa, una experimentación que hace explotar los caminos recurrentes y abre nuevos, aunque no los pavimente. Puede ser un poco menos atrapante que otros de sus trabajos pero sigue siendo mucho más atrapante que cualquier otro artículo científico o parecidos.

Y esta intuición creativa es un todo: está en esta fanzine, en otras, en su instagram, y avanza hacia un cambio de paradigma global. Es una exploración de las alternativas al patriarcado, al colonialismo, al capacitismo, al capitalismo en lo subjetivo, lo intersubjetivo, en nuestras relaciones con otrxs y con el mundo. Y es una búsqueda de alternativas que, a diferencia de otras búsquedas basadas en utopías y la austeridad revolucionaria, se preocupa por encontrar cosas que no sólo se pueden aplicar aquí y ahora, sino que nos quieren más felices, más conectadxs, más segurxs. No son alternativas, ni textos, terminados, perfectos, para nada. Pero son lo que necesitamos, me parece.
La teoría puede ser un hechizo.

[eng]
I think it is difficult to comment on a single work by Clementine Morrigan because I feel that her work functions as a whole, a whole that is definitely much more than the sum of its parts.
This particular fanzine is more academic. However, its merit is not really an impeccable methodology, an extensive bibliography, a detailed critique; here what is powerful, what is worthwhile, is a creative intuition, an experimentation that makes recurrent paths explode and opens new ones, although it does not pave them. It may be a little less "caching" than other of their works but it is still much more engaging than any other scientific article or the like.

And this creative intuition is a whole: it is in this fanzine, in others, in its instagram, and it is moving towards a global paradigm shift. There is an exploration of alternatives to patriarchy, colonialism, ableism, capitalism, in the subjective, the intersubjective, in our relations with others and with the world. And it is a search for alternatives that, unlike other searches based on utopias and revolutionary austerity, is concerned with promoting things that not only can be applied here and now, but that want us to be happier, more connected. They are not alternatives, nor texts, thar are finished, perfect, not at all. But they are what we need, I think.
Theory can be a spell.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very challenging and engaging. I disagreed with an essay or two, and I wholeheartedly related to most of it. A great way to spend an afternoon. I particularly enjoyed the discussion about psychiatric and chemical incarceration.

[Emma Gerstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m going to show this book to my therapist (affectionate)