Performative Trauma Narratives: Imperfect Memories and Epistemic Harms

Abstract

In this paper, I suggest that individuals who suffer trauma are often forced to reproduce that for material gain. After noting the key features of what I define as ‘performing trauma narratives’, I argue that the environments in which these narratives are told place undue epistemic burdens on the victims and fail to account for the differential understanding of listeners and the difficulties in conveying the descriptive and normative features with accuracy and integrity. I argue that this results in two specific forms of epistemic injustice: structurally precarious testimonial injustice’ and binary hermeneutical injustice’. I go on to suggest that these epistemic burdens prevent the healing from the traumatic experience in virtue of causing victims to normatively dissociate from their traumatic experience causing victim’s to not appropriately integrate their memories into their conception of self.