leonineantiheroine:

Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (1997), p. 188.

practically everything i said in the last week, not even that differently: 

1. there were a lot of trauma studies people in my various classes but trauma theory creeps me out because of aesthetics (“indestructible inner life”) and assumptions about subjectivity.
2. although i kind of like the 90swoman familiarity in a sort of “my mom would have this book next to her bed” kind of way.
3. i’m used to talking about radical vulnerability, not bodily integrity, although i am interested in reassembling—or maybe just assembling—a body. tumblr and photo booth are crucial. 
4. “generations,” i know, see: queer theory. 
5. i don’t know if the telling of the trauma story inevitably plunges the survivor into profound grief. (though all the therapists wanted to note that the end of the relationship didn’t happen until i started talking about phil’s death in therapy. but.) 
6. which trauma is the trauma and how many survivors are there? 
7. i am in no danger of resisting mourning out of pride, it’s possible i take pride in mourning, though pride is so gross, i prefer the commitment to being casual. anyway, that idea is really good, i can see its allure, and i don’t know if any of the literary trauma theory i’ve read accounts for it. luckily there are heavily aestheticized mourning practices.
8. we could call “reframing” “misreading” and i would like this better. 
9. i am still not into that new fiona apple song because i do not, in fact, want to feel everything, i already did and it sucked. however: feeling as an act of resistance, including revolutionary hysteria