- Title
- The immanence of traumatic rupture : From the extra/ordinary to the originary
- Creator
- Pedersen, Cassie
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- Text; Thesis; PhD
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/162581
- Identifier
- vital:12700
- Identifier
- https://library.federation.edu.au/record=b2746604
- Abstract
- This thesis critically intervenes into the interdisciplinary space of trauma theory by both identifying and circumventing the tendency of theorists to posit trauma in a relation of either transcendence or immanence to the contexts in which it occurs. In the classical trauma theories of Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub, and Cathy Caruth, trauma is broadly defined as a disruptive and aporetic event that shatters the cognitive, experiential, and representational frameworks necessary for making sense of the occurrence. These theorists conceptualise trauma as transcendent, seeing trauma as existing “outside” or “beyond” the frameworks in which it comes into being. However, more recent critics enter a polemic with classical trauma theorists by reconceptualising trauma as immanent to the all too human frameworks that facilitate its occurrence in the first place. I contend that the mutual exclusive insistence that trauma need either be conceived as immanent to, or transcendent of, the frameworks in which it occurs has led to a conceptual impasse in trauma theory that is rooted in a false dichotomy between these extremes. Tracing this oppositional tendency across a broad disciplinary spectrum, engaging contributions to trauma theory from philosophy, literary theory, and history, the major aim of this thesis to move beyond the false dichotomy between the immanent and the transcendent by revealing that these terms are inextricably bound. Drawing on the works of Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Jean Laplanche, and Jean-François Lyotard (to name only a few), this thesis revitalises the space of trauma theory by offering a series of interlocking arguments that conceptualise the alterity of trauma as being immanent to the frameworks it transcends. This paradoxical logic is at the crux of what I refer to as the immanence of traumatic rupture.; Doctor of Philosophy
- Publisher
- Federation University Australia
- Rights
- Copyright Cassie Pedersen
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Trauma theory; Transcedence; Immanence; Traumatic rupture
- Full Text
- Thesis Supervisor
- Mummery, Jane
- Hits: 1129
- Visitors: 1256
- Downloads: 253
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Australian Digitial Thesis | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |