Class Project-Theoretical Framework

In Jeffrey Alexander’s discussion of Cultural Trauma, he asserts that cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways. His approach to trauma maintains that events do not, in and of themselves, create collective trauma. Instead, trauma is socially mediated and can occur well after the event is over (i.e. slavery). Trauma is the result of acute discomfort entering into the core of the collectivity’s sense of its own identity. Alexander outlines several important factors significant to cultural trauma: 

1) The trauma process is the gap between event and representation. For my research, I am suggesting that African Americans strive to see the trauma of slavery accurately and appropriately represented. The lack of this representation leads to the cultural trauma on collective identity.

2) The people who compose collectivities broadcast symbolic representations-characterizations- of ongoing social events, past, present, and future.

3) They broadcast these representations as members of a social group

4) Then group representations can be seen as “claims” about the shape of social reality, its causes, and the repsonsibilities for action such causes imply 

5) The cultural construction of trauma begins with such a claim

 Neil Smelser argues that a collective trauma, affecting a group with definable membership, will, of necessity, also be associated with that group’s collective identity. The problem here is that none of the authors I have read take the time to define “group”. Many make claims about grouping, but seem to assume that grouping naturally occurs. Using Omi and Winant, I will take a step back from these arguments to first establish how race is defined and how racial formations are formed. One of the main intersections between Omi and Winant’s theories and my work on cultural trauma can be found by examining Alexander’s discussion on identity formation. He asserts that identities are constantly constructed and secured. Even under the trauma of a national or cultural event (or series of events), identities are never stable. Like cultural trauma, Omi and Winant argue that race is a part social structure and part cultural representation. They define racial formation as “the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.” I argue that the culture trauma of slavery is one sociohistorical process that creates and transforms racial formation. Furthermore, I will begin to look at how the intersections of gender and racial formations inform the identity of African American women under the umbrella of cultural trauma. 

It is interesting to see the intersections between Alexander and Omi and Winant. Both are concerned with the forming of a collective, and both suggest that that formation and grouping is constantly being changed and influenced by the current culture. I am pleased to see these concepts fitting together to inform each other, and I will continue to blog about these intersections in the coming week.

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