Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity Chapter 1

"Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma"
Jeffrey C. Alexander

In this chapter, which serves as an introduction to Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, Alexander posits a theory of trauma intended to break away from what he calls “lay trauma theory” – a school of thought he separates into two schools, enlightenment and psychoanalytic.

The enlightenment school of lay trauma theory, Alexander writes, is useful for its collective emphasis, positing experiences of trauma as existing within a forward-moving social order. Indeed, according to the author, enlightenment trauma theory sees trauma as a positive social force. The occurrence of trauma, the theory posits, will lead to innovation and change. Improved economies following wars are used as evidence for this theory. Alexander calls this thinking “realist” (5).

The psychoanalytic understanding of trauma, on the other hand, remains individually based and is largely informed by theories of repression. In this section Alexander mentions the work of Cathy Caruth, another author featured on the course syllabus. Alexander conceptualizes psychoanalytic trauma theory as depending on a Freudian definition of trauma as arising from the unexpected, and truly manifesting itself in the haunting after effect of not knowing, and not expecting, what has happened.

Alexander classifies both approaches as “naturalistic.” By this, he means that both theories rely on an understanding that the type of trauma experienced is informed by the type of event. Alexander devotes his introduction to arguing that the type of trauma that occurs, and how it is consumed by a society, is informed not by the event but by a trauma process. Specifically, Alexander asserts that trauma does not arise from events themselves because no event can be inherently traumatic. Rather, trauma is “socially mediated,” and can arise from occurrences that never, in fact, took place (8).

Alexander goes on to identify the “social process of cultural trauma,” claiming that an event becomes traumatic as certain agents, members of “carrier groups,” work to ingrain that trauma into the collective identity. Questions must be brought forth as to the nature of the pain caused by the event, the nature of the victim, the relation of that victim to the wider group, and how that relationship and the event itself is then consumed by different “institutional areas.” Considering religious, aesthetic, legal, scientific, mass media, state bureaucracy, and stratificational hierarchies, Alexander goes into the questions raised in these specific groups and communities, and how this informs trauma’s entrance into the collective identity.

Ultimately, the experience of trauma can take place. Alexander calls this a “sociological process,” consisting of the definition of a painful injury, the establishment of a victim, attribution of responsibility, and distribution of the ideal and material consequences (22). This process, he continues, leads to relief, both in the public and private sphere.

Concluding his introduction with an assertion that trauma is a topic of interest in both Western and non-Western nations, Alexander posits that failure to recognize collective traumas by not participating in the trauma process leads to a lack of emergence of “lessons into collective identity” (26). Closing, Alexander emphasizes that the theory he has laid out is not simply "technical and scientific," but rather that is it "normatively relevant," and can inform trauma processes to ultimate "moral-practical action."