Research Catalog

The empire of trauma : an inquiry into the condition of victimhood

Title: The empire of trauma : an inquiry into the condition of victimhood / Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman ; translated by Rachel Gomme.
Author: Fassin, Didier.
Publication: Princeton ; Oxford : Princeton University Press, ©2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	RC552.P67 F3713 2009	Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Rechtman, Richard.

Description

xii, 305 pages; 25 cm

Summary

This work shows how, during the 20th century, the perspective on victims of trauma shifted from suspicion to recognition. From these ethnographical fieldworks, the authors thus propose a broader perspective on the political and moral issues of contemporary societies.
"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." --

Uniform Title

Empire du traumatisme. English

Alternative Title

Empire du traumatisme.

Subject

Note

Originally published in French as: L'empire du traumatisme.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

A dual genealogy. The significance of a controversy. The birth of trauma. Labor laws -- The long hunt. Cowardice or death. The brutalization of therapy. After the war. A French history -- The intimate confession. War psychoanalysis. A profitable sickness. Victims of the self. The issue of survival -- An end to suspicion. Women and children first. The consecration of the event. The last witnesses. The humanity of criminals -- Psychiatric victimology. Victims' rights. The resistance of psychiatry. An ambiguous origin. A relative autonomy -- Toulouse. The summons to trauma. Emergency care in question. Inequalities and exclusions. Consolation and compensation -- Humanitarian psychiatry. One origin, two accounts. In the beginning was humanitarianism. On the margins of war. The frontiers of humanity -- Palestine. The need to testify. The chronicles of suffering. Equivalence of victims. Histories without a history -- The psychotraumatology of exile. The immigrant, between native and foreigner. The clinical practice of asylum. A change of paradigm. The evidence of the body -- Asylum. The illegitimate refugee. Recognizing the sign. The truth of writing. The meaning of words. Conclusion : the moral economy of trauma.

ISBN

9780691137520
9780691137537
0691137528
0691137536

LCCN

2008037892

OCLC

ocn245536506
245536506
SCSB-9811544

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library