Abstract
Associations between trauma and media theory are longstanding, going back at least to Walter Benjamin’s observations on technology and modernity, which were themselves informed by Freud’s 1920 speculations on war trauma following WWI. A century later, and in the wake of numerous conflicts, catastrophes, and far-reaching technological transformations—and of course the COVID pandemic—it is time to reconsider the relation between trauma and media, digital platforms in particular. While some significant scholarship has noted the intersections of modern media technologies such as photography, film, radio, television, and recently digital and algorithmic media, with the conception and experience of trauma, a more systematic theoretical consideration of the relation between media and trauma remains to be developed. And with the intensifying reliance on new and old media in these pandemic times the question of these relations is increasingly urgent. Moving beyond conceptions of media as representing or inducing trauma, this special section of Crosscurrents explores how (digital) media and trauma shape one another.
Associations between trauma and media theory are longstanding, going back at least to Walter Benjamin’s observations on technology and modernity, which were themselves informed by Freud’s 1920 speculations on war trauma following WWI. A century later, and in the wake of numerous conflicts, catastrophes, and far-reaching technological transformations—and of course the COVID pandemic—it is time to reconsider the relation between trauma and media, digital platforms in particular. While some significant scholarship has noted the intersections of modern media technologies such as photography, film, radio, television, and recently digital and algorithmic media, with the conception and experience of trauma, a more systematic theoretical consideration of the relation between media and trauma remains to be developed. And with the intensifying reliance on new and old media in these pandemic times the question of these relations is increasingly urgent. Moving beyond conceptions of media as representing or inducing trauma, this special section of Crosscurrents explores how (digital) media and trauma shape one another.
Almost two decades ago Thomas Elsaesser (2001) asked whether the contemporary cultural preoccupation with trauma was linked to the capacity of audio-visual media to record and repeat events. Since then the concept of trauma has been widely used to discuss media representations of extreme events such as the Holocaust, the 9/11 attacks, and the ‘war on terror,’ while theorists such as E. Ann Kaplan (2005) and Marianne Hirsch (2012) have explored different models for understanding the mediated transmission of traumatic memory. Direct examinations of the co-constitution of media and trauma have been rare. Allen Meek’s Trauma and Media (2010) presented a broader picture of how the theoretical and political relationship between these two terms could be traced to Charcot and Freud, while Amit Pinchevski’s more recent Transmitted Wounds (2019) engages with the media theory of Friedrich Kittler (1990, 1999) and others in order to ask to what extent traumatic temporalities are directly induced by technologies of recording, storage, and retrieval. At the same time, Michael Richardson (2016, 2018) and others have sought to reconceive trauma in affective terms that see mediation as modulating and modulated by traumatic effects.
Working from the common premise that trauma, both clinical and cultural, is intrinsically related to technological media, the scholars in this presentation of Crosscurrents consider a range of ways to understand this relation. While working from diverse standpoints, but in conversation with one another, the contributions reflect on the media specificity of trauma and traumatic events, addressing specific case studies from contemporary digital media culture. Taken together, contributions in this special section of Crosscurrents seek to revisit the intersections of media and trauma beyond questions of representation, re-enactment, and performance of traumatic memory, moving toward a renewed understanding of the ways in which media and trauma mutually implicated each other.
Work on this special section began in collaboration with Allen Meek. Sadly, Allen passed away unexpectedly last year. We dedicate this Crosscurrents special section to his memory.
