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Trauma Magic
Trauma Magic is a love letter to the bodies and minds we have. It is a hero’s journey disguised as a collection of essays. It begins with the enchanted landscape of Southern Ontario, the wild dancing of fairies teaching us boundaries and ecological ethics. It traces the call of magic through the queer desires of the Holy Virgin Mary, the movements of animals in the forest at night, and the practice of witchcraft in everyday life. Trauma Magic carries the generative tension of expansive desire and unbearable pain, taking the reader on a downward journey to the underworld of addiction and psychiatric incarceration, only to return to the surface in an explosive reclaiming of agency and power.
“Clementine Morrigan’s work joins a chorus of other disabled writers who are calling us to consider what non-normative bodies and minds have to celebrate – Morrigan asks us in “Trauma as Possibility” to pick apart violence and its effects: to value the traumatized experience while we continue to resist and oppose the violence which originates it.” – Tara McGowan-Ross, author of Scorpion Season and Girth.
“Trauma Magic is a crip & queer text enfolding compassion, justice, and vulnerability. While recognizing the violent and painful effects of trauma Morrigan simultaneously shares the beyond of trauma. The reader finds possibility when trauma is conceptualized as “a natural and ingenious response to circumstances which terrify and overwhelm.” Tactics of dissociation, hypervigilance and avoidance are re-perceived through an imaginative feminist lens and at a distance from normative conceptions. Not symptoms – resistance.” – Nancy Davis Halifax, author of Hook.
“Clementine Morrigan’s work joins a chorus of other disabled writers who are calling us to consider what non-normative bodies and minds have to celebrate – Morrigan asks us in “Trauma as Possibility” to pick apart violence and its effects: to value the traumatized experience while we continue to resist and oppose the violence which originates it.” – Tara McGowan-Ross, author of Scorpion Season and Girth.
“Trauma Magic is a crip & queer text enfolding compassion, justice, and vulnerability. While recognizing the violent and painful effects of trauma Morrigan simultaneously shares the beyond of trauma. The reader finds possibility when trauma is conceptualized as “a natural and ingenious response to circumstances which terrify and overwhelm.” Tactics of dissociation, hypervigilance and avoidance are re-perceived through an imaginative feminist lens and at a distance from normative conceptions. Not symptoms – resistance.” – Nancy Davis Halifax, author of Hook.
154 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2021
6 people are currently reading
178 people want to read
About the author
Clementine Morrigan
39 books371 followersClementine 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.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 25, 2020
[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.
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.
June 6, 2020
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.
November 26, 2022
I’m going to show this book to my therapist (affectionate)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews