Trauma, derived from the Greek word trôma which means literally a “wound”, occurs when persons confront horrific events that remain un-grasped by their consciousness. This experience resists immersion into either collective or personal stories. Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud in their article entitled: “On the Physical Mechanism of hysterical Phenomena: Preliminary Communication” explain that “any experience which calls up distressing affects, such as those of fright, anxiety, shame or physical pain may operate as a trauma of this kind” . In this sense, every horrific experience a person undergoes may cause trauma.
Cathy Caruth, pioneer trauma theorist, defines trauma as “not a single or systematizable [sic] concept but rather an ongoing set…show more content… In a similar way, trauma theorist Geoffrey Hartman, asserts that: “‘the unclaimed experience’ [of trauma] can only be reclaimed by literary knowledge” Accordingly, he offers a theory which allows an effective combination of words and trauma. He explains that the use of words allows the consciousness to grasp the traumatic event, and thus allows a shift of this traumatic event from the unconscious to the conscious mind, to put it differently: words can represent trauma and consequently heal traumatized…show more content… Adorno expresses the impossibility of combining together suffering and aesthetics, he states that: “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” For him, “the aesthetic principle of stylization [. . .] make an unthinkable fate appear to have had some meaning: it is transfigured, something of its horror is removed. This alone does an injustice to the victims” He explains how the mere fact of trying to represent suffering in art and literature “contains, however remotely, the power to elicit enjoyment out of it” and it is this ‘enjoyment’ per se that renders any representation unethical. Despite this, Adorno acknowledges the role of art and literature in representing traumatic events, and the Holocaust especially when he admits that: “it is now virtually in art alone that suffering can still find its voice, consolation, without immediately being betrayed by it.” Accordingly, Adorno approves the use of art to represent life, including traumatic
