Future of Trauma Theory

<p>This collection analyses the future of ‘trauma theory’ a major theoretical discourse in contemporary criticism and theory. The chapters advance the current state of the field by exploring new areas asking new questions and making new connections.</p><p>Part one <i>History and Culture</i> begins by developing trauma theory in its more familiar post-deconstructive mode and explores how these insights might still be productive. It goes on via a critique of existing positions to relocate trauma theory in a postcolonial and globalized world theoretically aesthetically and materially and focuses on non-Western accounts and understandings of trauma memory and suffering. Part two <i>Politics and Subjectivity</i> turns explicitly to politics and subjectivity focussing on the state and the various forms of subjection to which it gives rise and on human rights biopolitics and community.</p><p>Each chapter in different ways advocates a movement beyond the sort of texts and concepts that are the usual focus for trauma criticism and moves this dynamic network of ideas forward.</p><p>With contributions from an international selection of leading critics and thinkers from the US and Europe this volume will be a key critical intervention in one of the most important areas in contemporary literary criticism and theory.</p>