ABSTRACT

This paper aims to offer both an interpretation and a critique of the epistemological foundations underlying one of the most recent approaches to trauma studies: cultural trauma theory. After the First World War, the founding father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, inquired into whether his diagnostic of “traumatic neurosis” could shed light on how collectives deal with unsettling experiences and memories. Throughout the intervening decades, Freud´s insights into collective trauma have attracted the interest of scholars from various disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, from literary studies to historiography, memory studies, and, finally – the focus of this paper – cultural and social theory. By underlining the ways in which the proponents of cultural trauma theory – Jeffrey Alexander, Neil Smelzer, Piotr Sztompka, Bernhard Giesen, and Ron Eyerman – have reframed Freudian ideas regarding the transmission of legacies of collective suffering, the paper considers whether the notion of trauma can be extended to the analysis of cultures and societies. It explores the ambivalent relationship between psychoanalysis and contemporary cultural trauma theory to disclose the theoretical assumptions and weaknesses of the latter.

摘要

本文旨在对作为创伤研究的最新方法之一的认识论基础进行解释和批判：文化创伤理论。第一次世界大战后，精神分析的创始人西格蒙德·弗洛伊德 (Sigmund Freud) 询问他对“创伤性神经症”的诊断是否可以揭示集体如何处理令人不安的经历和记忆。在此后的几十年里，弗洛伊德对集体创伤的洞察吸引了人文和社会科学各学科学者的兴趣，从文学研究到史学、记忆研究，最后——本文的重点——文化和社会理论。通过强调文化创伤理论的支持者——Jeffrey Alexander、Neil Smelzer、Piotr Sztompka，伯恩哈德·吉森 (Bernhard Giesen) 和罗恩·艾尔曼 (Ron Eyerman) 重新构建了弗洛伊德关于集体痛苦遗产传递的思想，该论文考虑了创伤的概念是否可以扩展到对文化和社会的分析。它探讨了精神分析与当代文化创伤理论之间的矛盾关系，以揭示后者的理论假设和弱点。