The Queer Art of Failure (2011)

Jack Halberstam
Introduction: Low Theory

Being taken seriously means missing out on the chance to be frivolous, promiscuous, and irrelevant. The desire to be taken seriously is precisely what compels people to follow the tried and true paths of knowledge production around which I would like to map a few detours. Indeed terms like serious and rigorous tend to be code words, in academia as well as other contexts, for disciplinary correctness; they signal a form of training and learning that confirms what is already known according to approved methods of knowing, but they do not allow for visionary insights of flights of fancy.

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (1992)

Judith Lewis Herman
Part I: Traumatic Disorders
Chapter One: A Forgotten History

To study psychological trauma is to come face to face both with human vulnerability in the natural world and with the capacity for evil in human nature. To study psychological trauma means bearing witness to horrible events. When the events are natural disasters or “acts of God,” those who bear witness sympathize readily with the victim. But when the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides.

It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.

The perpetrator’s arguments prove irresistible when the bystander faces them in isolation. Without a supportive social environment, the bystander usually succumbs to the temptation to look the other way. This is true even when the victim is an idealized and valued member of society.

When the victim is already devalued (a woman, a child), she may find that the most traumatic events of her life take place outside the realm of socially validated reality. Her experience becomes unspeakable.

Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing During the Holocaust (2017)

Amos Goldberg
Introduction: If This Is a Man

The fundamental principle in life-story and autobiography studies is that only through language can people give meaning to the events of their lives and constitute their identities, that is, by weaving those events into a narrative. In other words, there is a close affinity between the autobiographical text - as language, narrative, and narration - and the constitution and existence of a subject with a distinct identity. Whether people experience their lives as narrative or merely afford their lives meaning through narrative, they can only experience them through the act of narration, which entails the varying levels of cohesion and coherence that the story imposes on the plot, as well as the processes of thematization present in various aspects of the story, without which human experience cannot, in fact, be discussed.