E. Ann Kaplan

Era
 Main Interests
Environment and Humanities Feminist Film Theory
 Notable Work
*Terror and Loss in Media and Literature*
(1856-1865 NATC 3rd. ed)

## Biography

* Earned a BA in English, Literature from the University of Birmingham in England in 1958
* Earned a post-graduate diploma in English from the University of London in 1959
* Earned a Ph.D in comparative literature from Rutgers University in 1970
* Lecturer of film at London's British Film Institute
* 1980: moved to the U.S. where she was a professor at Monmouth College, Rutgers University, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she currently teaches
* Distinguished Professor of English and Cultural Analysis and Theory at Stony Brook University where she was also a founding director of the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook (1987-2014)
* Served as president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (2003-2005)
* Received Distinguished Career Award (2009)
* Early work focuses on cinema and feminism and then later broadened to popular culture and trauma studies
* Books
	+ Women in Film: Both sides of the Camera
	+ Women in Film Noid
	+ Motherhood and Representation
	+ Feminism and Film
	+ Trauma and Cinema: Cross-Cultural Explorations
	+ Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature
	+ Climate Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian Film and Fiction

## from *Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature (Chapter 1)*

### **Background and Historical Context**

In the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, many researchers and scholars from various fields began to explore the effects of trauma in not just the sense of war veterans, but also with people who suffered from severe events, such as accidents or physical and sexual abuse. Kaplan's *Trauma Culture* as a whole explores trauma studies through the writings off Sigmund Freud in which she develops both an account and critique of trauma theory. In the section provided, Kaplan analyzes the artistic, cinematic, and literary forms through witch individuals and collectives describe how they have experienced and dealt with trauma.

A more extensive explanation of the section is described as follows: The section is from Kaplan's first chapter "Why Trauma Now?: Freud and Trauma Studies", where she "gives a critical overview of Freud's work on trauma as it emerged gradually from his explorations of sexuality, unconscious motivation, and neurosis. Kaplan reminds us that Freud and his followers were students first of hysteria and that their work on trauma developed from it-or, rather, that the concept of trauma was already implicit on it. Freud and others saw that the symptoms of trauma may arise belatedly, well after the event, and in their studies of women, they connect traumatic memory, repression, fantasy, and hysteria to sexuality and sexual abuse. One of the limitations of their work done in the 1890's and early 1900's, Kaplan observes, is its lack of attention to social constructions of gender, which in cases of sexual trauma lead to different neuroses" (1855).

### **Key Words and Terms**

**Trauma:** Greek meaning "wound"; specialist term for an external injury or the condition caused by such an injury (OED, 1693). Used to describe a behavioral change termed "traumatic psychosis" (OED, 1889). Refers to psychic injury caused by an "emotional shock the memory of which is repressed and remains unhealed". A wound either external or internal, as well as the deep distress and disturbance that accompany it (Today).

**Affect:** A feeling or subjective experience accompanying a thought or action or occurring in response to a stimulus; an emotion, a mood (OED).

**Cultural Studies:** an innovative interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that investigates the ways in which "culture" creates and transforms individual experiences, everyday life, social relations and power.

**Feminist Criticism:** critiques patriarchal language and literature by exposing how these reflect masculine ideology.

**Gender:** The state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones; the collective attributes or traits associated with a particular sex, or determined as a result of one's sex (OED).

**Media:** The main means of mass communication, esp. newspapers, radio, and television, regarded collectively (OED). Also **Media Studies:** analysis of the mass media; study of the media as an academic discipline (OED).

**Modernity:** An intellectual tendency or social perspective characterized by departure from or repudiation of traditional ideas, doctrines, and cultural values in favour of contemporary or radical values and beliefs (OED).

**Psychoanalysis:** a therapeutic method, originated by Sigmund Freud, for treating mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the patient's mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind, using techniques such as dream interpretation and free association

**Subjectivity:** "the subjects sense of life"; something in oneself by which a person understands the world around them

### **Key Quotations**

"It all begins with Freud, of course. And the more I read off contemporary trauma theories, the more I believe that Freud had already said a great deal" (1856).

"The phenomena of trauma, particularly hysteria, that interested clinicians did not arise in the vacuum. The phenomena were closely linked to modernity, especially to the industrial revolution and its dangerous new machines...as well as to the linked growth of the bourgeois family (1857).

"What's interesting is that unlike psychologists and others writing today, Freud and his peers did not set out to write a *theory* of trauma. The concept of trauma emerges in their work on hysteria as if already assumed. It is used to explain the process of hysteria, rather than as a concept that has itself to be theorized" (1857).

"Freud does not go on to ask how cultural, political, and social roles laid down for men and women produce different neurosis in the case of sexual trauma" (1859).

"British doctors faced with traumatized soldiers, apparently applied theories of female hysteria caused by sexual trauma to battle trauma. It is unclear whether they arrived independently at their conclusions about war trauma as hysteria or simply did not mention Freud's views on hysteria because it would require discussion of female sexuality" (1860).

"Freud is at pains to find a link between the traumatic neurosis of war and of peacetime, which he does by arguing that in both cases there is a conflict with the ego" (1861).

"If hysteria is the result of *fantasies,* then it cannot be the same phenomenon as war trauma" (1862).

"In attempting to understand how the mental apparatus produces pleasure and unpleasure, [Freud] began to distinguish between unpleasure from the pressure of internal unsatisfied instincts and unpleasure from an external perception recognized by the mental apparatus as a danger" (1863).

"...the difference in how soldiers react to similar war traumas may depend on how far the war situation triggered prior psychic conflicts" (1864).

"We see Freud, especially in *Beyond the Pleasure Principle*, struggling to develop models of the brain that neuroscientists have only recently been able to produce through new technologies and lab experiments unavailable in Freud's day" (1865).

"[Freud] anticipated such circuits without the knowledge new technologies have made possible" (1865).

### **Discussion**

**The Complexity of "Trauma"**

Kaplan makes it clear that trauma should be attached to not just victims and survivors of sever events, but also those who have suffered through terror. She describes that trauma is an individualized experience, which leads to the fact that all cases have to be diagnosed and treated in accordance with the individuals trauma. This is where she is similar to Freud, as she prefers personalized talk therapy and not the old ways of electric shock and Bain surgeries. Here she points that historical contexts shape the experience of trauma, as she discusses through the examples of the industrial revolution, war, bourgeois family, and different social positions between the genders.

For today, an example of a trauma study could relate to the still after effects of 9/11. That day, everyone experienced trauma in all dimensions: personal, communal, local and national. This is where Kaplan's studies on film and media are effective, as the world was made aware of what had happened on that day. For most of us, we were in elementary school when the events happened and were not fully aware of the situation at hand. We probably knew that something terrible had just happened by our parents or guardians reactions, but these were not made manifested till we grew up. Now when we remember that day, we share a collective trauma that deals with the terror that was experienced, by posting pictures on social media with the hashtag Never Forget; locals visiting the memorial and remembering their loved ones; the nation lowering the flag.

### **Discussion Questions**

In the first paragraph of our selection, Kaplan gives a
quick summary of the history of trauma studies as oriented toward Freud’s work.
She concludes the paragraph by acknowledging the ways that empirical studies of
“brain circuitry and mechanics” have proven what could only early be theorized;
she goes on to say, however, that such work has also come “at the cost of
Freud’s insistence on unconscious fantasy as also involved in traumatic
effects.” To what extent do we see an attention to the involvement of
“unconscious fantasy” at work in our selection?

What does Kaplan’s investments in feminism help her see in
discussions of trauma that might otherwise go unnoticed?

As the *NATC* intro
to our selection notes, Kaplan draws from a wide variety of disciplines and
media: “the tools and techniques of literary criticism, media studies, feminist
psychoanalysis, and neuroscience.” To what extent can we point to such
“wide-ranging and interdisciplinary” work in other critics we have encountered?
What seems to be the benefit of such work? Are there drawbacks, and if so what
might they be?

Our selection, as signaled by the chapter title, is
essentially a reading of Freud’s work on trauma. We’ve already read one of the
texts Kaplan mentions. How recognizable were the contours of Kaplan’s argument
given our earlier exposure to Freud’s thought? To what extent did Kaplan’s use
and account of *Beyond the Pleasure*
Principle *conform or complicate your sense of that text?*

## **Bibliography**

* *Women in Film: Both Sides of the Camera* (1983)
* *Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Post Modernism and Consumer Culture*(1987)
* *Postmodernism and Its Discontents: Theories, Practices* (1988)
* *Women in Film Noir Looking for the Other: Feminism*
* *Motherhood and Representation* (1992)
* *Looking for the Other : Feminism, Film and the Imperial Gaze* (1997)
* *Feminism and Film* (2000)
* *Trauma and Cinema: Cross-Cultural Explorations*(co-edited with Ban Wang, 2004)

* *Trauma and Cinema - Cross-Cultural Explorations*(2010)
* *Climate Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian Film and Fiction* (2015)

## **See Also**

Andreas Killen

Cathy Caruth

Shoshana Felman

Dominick LaCapra

Pat Barker

Sigmund Freud