Today we are accustomed to psychiatrists being summoned to scenes of terrorist attacks, natural disasters, war, and other tragic events to care for the psychic trauma of victims—yet it has not always been so. The very idea of psychic trauma came into being only at the end of the nineteenth century and for a long time was treated with suspicion. The Empire of Trauma tells the story of how the traumatic victim became culturally and politically respectable, and how trauma itself became an unassailable moral category.
Basing their analysis on a wide-ranging ethnography, Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman examine the politics of reparation, testimony, and proof made possible by the recognition of trauma. They study the application of psychiatric victimology to victims of the 1995 terrorist bombings in Paris and the 2001 industrial disaster in Toulouse; the involvement of humanitarian psychiatry with both Palestinians and Israelis during the second Intifada; and the application of the psychotraumatology of exile to asylum seekers victimized by persecution and torture.
Revealing how trauma has come to authenticate the suffering of victims, The Empire of Trauma provides critical perspective on some of the moral and political issues at stake in the contemporary world.
Didier Fassin, one of France's leading social anthropologists and a physician in internal medicine, is the James D. Wolfensohn Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Richard Rechtman, a psychiatrist and anthropologist, is medical director of the Institut Marcel Rivière in France. Both are members of the Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Social Issues (IRIS).
Table of Contents
Preface to the English Edition xiIntroduction: A New Language of the Event 1 PART ONE: The Reversing of the Truth 13CHAPTER ONE: A Dual Genealogy 25The Significance of a Controversy 27The Birth of Trauma 30Labor Laws 34CHAPTER TWO: The Long Hunt 40Cowardice or Death 41The Brutalization of Therapy 43After the War 50A French History 54CHAPTER THREE: The Intimate Confession 58War Psychoanalysis 59A Profitable Sickness 64Victims of the Self 66The Issue of Survival 70CHAPTER FOUR: An End to Suspicion 77Women and Children First 78The Consecration of the Event 84The Last Witnesses 88The Humanity of Criminals 93 PART TWO: The Politics of Reparation 99CHAPTER FIVE: Psychiatric Victimology 107Victims’ Rights 108The Resistance of Psychiatry 115An Ambiguous Origin 119A Relative Autonomy 124CHAPTER SIX: Toulouse 128The Summons to Trauma 130Emergency Care in Question 135Inequalities and Exclusions 140Consolation and Compensation 148 PART THREE: The Politics of Testimony 155CHAPTER SEVEN: Humanitarian Psychiatry 163One Origin, Two Accounts 164In the Beginning Was Humanitarianism 171On the Margins of War 177The Frontiers of Humanity 183CHAPTER EIGHT: Palestine 189The Need to Testify 192The Chronicles of Suffering 197The Equivalence of Victims 203Histories without a History 209 PART FOUR: The Politics of Proof 217CHAPTER NINE: The Psychotraumatology of Exile 225The Immigrant, Between Native and Foreigner 226The Clinical Practice of Asylum 231A Change of Paradigm 236The Evidence of the Body 242CHAPTER TEN: Asylum 250The Illegitimate Refugee 252Recognizing the Sign 258The Truth of Writing 264The Meaning of Words 269 CONCLUSION: The Moral Economy of Trauma 275Bibliography 285Index of Names 299Index of Subjects 303
The Empire of Trauma is a nuanced study of the complex and contradictory histories of practices and debates within psychiatry, military medicine, psychoanalysis, political activism, and international humanitarianism. It is a much-needed reflection on the overwhelming hegemony of discourses of trauma and reparation, one that does not dismiss the reality of the experience, but instead aims at clearing a space where the painful utterance may reclaim its evocative force and its effectiveness, and may be heard once again. — Stefania Pandolfo, University of California, Berkeley
From the Publisher
"An enormous achievement. The Empire of Trauma offers not only an understanding of the anthropology of the concept of trauma in general, but also a very interesting discussion of the development of values and value systems in our globalized world. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time on the issue of trauma."—David Becker, Free University Berlin"The Empire of Trauma is a nuanced study of the complex and contradictory histories of practices and debates within psychiatry, military medicine, psychoanalysis, political activism, and international humanitarianism. It is a much-needed reflection on the overwhelming hegemony of discourses of trauma and reparation, one that does not dismiss the reality of the experience, but instead aims at clearing a space where the painful utterance may reclaim its evocative force and its effectiveness, and may be heard once again."—Stefania Pandolfo, University of California, Berkeley
David Becker
An enormous achievement. The Empire of Trauma offers not only an understanding of the anthropology of the concept of trauma in general, but also a very interesting discussion of the development of values and value systems in our globalized world. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time on the issue of trauma. — David Becker, Free University Berlin
