The Traumatic Imagination: Histories of Violence in Magical Real ...

Chapter 1

Living with Trauma

The Uncanny Reality of Shock Chronotopes

Long before it came to be described as a complex psychological condition in the late nineteenth century, trauma had been a recurrent marker of the human collective psyche along its turbulent journey through history. Originating in extreme events whose full meaning society could not possibly have grasped when they happened because their violence and non-conformity to its established sense of the real eluded understanding, trauma has afflicted individual identities and has left enduring scars on entire cultures. Those directly affected by it have either subconsciously acted it out, or have consciously tried to work through it, or have eventually found themselves crushed by it; psychiatrists have tried their best to counter its disruptive, and often destructive, effects; psychologists and sociologists have analyzed its causes, forms of manifestation, and impact on human subjectivity and sense of identity; politicians have taken advantage of its social implications; and artists have dug deep into their emotional and imaginative resources to represent it. Whichever the case,