What is now called trauma theory informs contemporary biography as much as it does the academic practice of literary history. Belief in trauma as a kind of agency, as a cultural force - in events as the real heroes and heroines in life stories - turns up historically when people are beginning to lose faith in God and character and cause and effect. Despite the fact that the relationship between being shocked and being changed is indeterminate - many shocking things make little real difference, and the unnoticed and the unnoticeable can have astonishing repercussions - the idea of trauma reassures us that we can find a beginning, and that there is a beginning worth finding. It puts a plot, if not a plan, back into modern lives.

LRB 22 May 2003 | PDF Download