What Happened? Re-presenting Traumas, Uncovering Recoveries

Traumatic experiences with an overwhelming life-threatening feel affect numerous people’s lives. Death and disablement through accident, illness, war, family violence, natural and human-induced disaster can be experienced variously at an individual level through to whole communities and nations. Traumatic memories are intrusive and insistent but fragmented and distorted by the power of sensory information frozen in time. This volume examines the ways individuals, families, communities and nations have engaged with representations of traumas and the ethical dimensions embedded in those re-presentations. Contributors also explore the work of recovering from trauma and finding resilience through working with narrative and embodied forms such as dance and breathing. The ubiquity of trauma in human experience means that pathways to recovery differ, emerging from the way each engages with the world. Sharing, and reflecting on, the ways each copes with trauma contributes to its understanding as well as pathways to recovery and new strengths.

Contributors are Svetlana Antropova, Peter Bray, Kate Burton, Mark Callaghan, Marie France Forcier, Monica Hinton, Gen’ichiro Itakura, Danielle Schaub, Zeina Tarraf and Paul Vivian.