Within “An Archive of Feelings” Ann Cvetkovich investigates trauma and our society’s perceptions of trauma, arguing for the rethinking of what constitutes the categorization “traumatic.” She draws on influences from the realms of Marxism, queer theory, Feminism, and race issues to assert that insidious trauma, or trauma which “resists the melodramatic structure of an easily identifiable origin of trauma,” is just as legitimate as the common notion of trauma as originating from a clearly identifiable and catastrophic personal experience (33). Under the framework she constructs, having experienced the Holocaust is traumatic, but having ancestors who lived through this atrocity is traumatic as well. By locating trauma as a thoroughly personal reaction to a horrible experience, and thus as a condition which should be treated with personalized therapeutic or medical attention, Cevetkovich claims our society produces “a hall of mirrors in which social problems are reduced to diseases in need of forever refined diagnosis,” positioning the recognition of the legitimacy of insidious trauma as paramount to revealing “the need to change social structures more broadly rather than just fix individual people”(33).
The disability rights movement, as described by Eli Clare within her article “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness,” operates in accordance to Cvetkovich’s perspective that the medicalization and personalization of traumatic experience has led social problems to remain unaddressed. Clare asserts the “dominant paradigms of disability,” which she labels “the medical, charity, supercrip, and moral models” all “turn disability into problems face by individual people, locate those problems in our bodies, and define those bodies as wrong”(359-69). These simplistic ways of viewing disability, and more specifically the trauma of disability, are all based on fairly one dimensional emotional responses, or what Cvetkovich would deem “easy emotions.” In contrast to these efforts to locate the pain of disability entirely within the brokenness of the body, the disability rights movement positions the insidious trauma of living as a disabled individual in America as a derivative of the “material and social conditions of albeism,” or a result of societal discrimination (360). However, though Clare’s description of day to day life as a queer individual with a disability can rightfully be labeled traumatic, revealing an investment in Cvetkovich’s conception of insidious trauma, she harshly critiques the disability rights movement’s attempt to externalize the experience of this trauma, arguing that the experience of oppression cannot be divorced from personalized bodily experience.
Though Cvetkovich and Clare can be viewed as embodying opposing stances on the basis of these external and internal focuses, their respective arguments are not completely adversarial. Cvetkovich expresses a reverence for those who refuse to accept the inscriptions society has written onto their bodies and the conception of themselves as broken by their trauma, calling for exploration of the infinitely varied affective experience of those who live with insidious trauma. The chronicle of Clare’s process of coming to terms with the physical realities of her disability presented within “Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness” provides a perfect example of both an individual’s refusal to be defined by societal definitions and a representation of an infinitely complicated affective response to traumatic circumstances which transcends “easy emotion”. Though Cvetkovich positions societal change, or the reevaluation and transformation of familiar attitudes concerning trauma’s definition and the scope of its effects, as a key step to reducing the pain of those affected by insidious trauma, while Clare asserts the lives of such individuals can most expediently be improved through the alteration of how they themselves put their own experience into context, these processes are certainly intertwined, and both scholars recognize this fact. By acknowledging the importance of those who have been affected by insidious trauma reclaiming shame, a thoroughly personal action, Cvetkovich reveals that her argumentation for societal change is motivated by a belief that widespread recognition of insidious trauma will make processes of personal healing easier. Thus her argument does not undercut the importance of the personal experience of trauma, but reflects a determination that personal experience is connected to history and the collective experience of groups. Similarly, Clare concedes that personal transformation is reliant on “all the allies, lovers, community, and friends we can gather, all the rabble-rousing and legislation, all the vibrant culture and articulate theory we can bring into being” or the very external factors which Cvetkovich champions (364). Though their concentrations vary, it is unfair to accuse Cvetkovich of abandoning the body and unwarranted to assert Clare does not recognize context. Together the argumentation of both scholars forms a coherent vision of the complexities of trauma, its infinitely personal nature and simultaneous connection to social and cultural history spanning centuries.
Works Cited
Clare, Eli. "Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and Queerness." Public Culture, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2001, pp. 359-365. Print.
Cvetkovich, Ann. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Duke University Press. 2003.
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