Tapping on Collective National Trauma

Abstract

Introduction Media and trauma cannot exist independently but are always caught in a cross-feedback loop. Depending on its mediating technology, trauma has always given rise to a different “technological unconscious” whereby the very conditions of trauma are tied to its form and technological dimensions (Johanssen 311). Our analysis explores this link, drawing on the case of the 2023 Greek TRAUMA podcast (Koukoumakas et al.), an audio documentary nested in iMEdD Lab, tracing seven disastrous events that have afflicted Greece in the last twenty-four years – from the Parnitha earthquake in 1999 to the Tempi train crash in 2023. This is a unique example of a quality news podcast that touches upon the ways collective trauma has built into the national identity of modern Greek people. There is a striking similarity in the way Amit Pinchevski describes how the Holocaust became a collectively shared trauma in Israel and how the TRAUMA podcast narrates the collective trauma in Greece. Without diminishing the experience of those directly involved and traumatised, TRAUMA weaves an audiography of a national body traversed with traumatic symptoms. Already from the title, TRAUMA bears a self-contradictory promise: to document that which essentially escapes documentation, or, in Amit Pinchevski’s apt words, to mediate a “failed mediation” (4). More specifically, trauma is being shaped by the technology through which it is mediated, and is tied to its form and technological dimensions (Johanssen 311). This is also the case in the present podcast, which (re)mediates seven stories of traumatic disaster in the acoustic language of voice and sound, and is necessarily bound and shaped by the very logics and limitations of the podcast medium. What concerns the present article is how, in the case of TRAUMA, podcasting logics tap on the existing media landscape of trauma coverage, negotiating and shaping trauma representation anew. Following current scholarship in the field, we read TRAUMA not only as a journalistic audio archive aiming to document and share traumatic narratives, but, rather, as essentially a(e)ffecting the way these stories are perceived. Far from aestheticising or sensationalising the “private drama of catastrophe”, as is often the perverse “lure” and the case with trauma coverage in traditional media, TRAUMA utilises podcast logics to create audibility platforms for otherwise lost voices, and thus, in an activist gesture, to draw attention to and raise concern about the painful repetition of tragic stories in the light of a non-(pro)active Greek state. Our analysis, framed in audio and content analysis of the TRAUMA podcast, minds a gap; there is little podcast-specific analysis of trauma mediation (Karathanasopoulou and Williams; Cardell and Douglas) even if the latter seems to flesh a recurrent thematic concern in podcast narratives (such as the podcast re-mediation of Holocaust narratives in 2019, titled “Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust”, or Greek podcasts From a Wonder to a Trauma and iMEdD’s Mute). Individual Voice Testimonies in the TRAUMA Podcast In light of its unique characteristics (lo-fi, low-cost, amateur-friendly, open-source, and relatively content-free), podcasting has been read as potentially challenging and even transgressing mainstream media discourse (Park; Rae; McHugh; Tiffe and Hoffmann). In her work on podcasting and political listening, Maria Rae sees in podcasts the ability to intervene in and disrupt existing media structures of attention that determine who is heard and how. Upending such “regimes of attention”, they may invite us, instead, to retune, un-hear, or hear differently. In the case of TRAUMA, the work taps on topics which have cross-fed a barrage of images on social media platforms, and fuelled 24-hour news cycles on traditional visual media. To this trauma-casting, it juxtaposes its own audio logics of multiple, yet unified, voicing and of slow, engaged listening. Literally “opening the mic” for those unheard or only heard little, TRAUMA makers aspire to host what they term as “the ‘unedited experience’ of the disaster”. This, they see as a gesture away from existing media coverage of disasters in Greece that may silence, voice-over, aestheticise, or selectively frame (and un-frame) individual voicing. The “voyeurism lure” is mindfully addressed as TRAUMA podcast makers have published – parallel to their documentary work – a journalists’ code of conduct in cases of trauma coverage, addressing issues related to “privacy, legislation, and journalist ethics” (Voutsina et al.). At the same time, the silencing or voice-over tactics, often employed in cases of trauma coverage, are also actively counter-balanced as TRAUMA utilises verbatim testimonies and offers opportunities for direct earwitnessing of what surfaces less as a private catastrophe and more as shared, public wound for Greek citizens. The notion of earwitnessing encompasses a form of listening attuned to the specific social, cultural, and political manifestations of sound and voice. To “earwitness” is to listen to the history that unfolds and to become responsible for what you listen to (Rae et al.). Letting otherwise lost voices surface and having us listen to those accounts, TRAUMA actively gestures towards “acoustic justice”, defined by Brandon Labelle in his homonymous book as “the practices or gestures that seek to rework the distribution of the heard” (131). Such reworking of audibility norms is best served through emphasis on unheard testimonies. Testimonies are indeed the more extensive part of the text genres emerging in the TRAUMA podcast. A relatively large number of codes were created, and data revealed that two codes appeared more frequently: the codes referring to the Mati fires and the Tempi fatal train accident. There are a couple of reasons for this, as both accidents were severe: the Mati fires that took place in 2018 “would go on to become the second deadliest fire globally in the past 25 years. 104 lives were tragically lost in Mati”, as the narration script testifies. The train crash in the Tempi valley in February 2023 was the most recent tragic event, and one that involved the loss of very young people. In the case of both disasters, testimonies prevail, only carefully complemented by narrative voice-over, news clips, or accompanying music. The news clip chosen to inform listeners about the tragic accident in Tempi is short and sharp: “Intercity train collides with commercial train, resulting in three wagons derailing”. Most of the sparse news clips used to enhance the informative lens of the documentary adopt the same style: they are short, accurate, and show the core of the news story. They are like stamps of verification of what actually happened, without however overshadowing or emotionally framing the actual verbatim material featured in the piece. Narrative voice-over and music follow the same logic of only discreetly framing the testimonial material. The voice-over that is featured in the podcast, with an agonising tune playing in the background, carefully offers sharp and concrete information on disastrous facts, introducing testimonies or drawing links between voices. Music also plays a significant role, even if the focus of the audio documentary is on discourse and voice; the musical background sets a mysterious tone, adding to the audio experience of the listener when accompanying the narrative voice. Its notable absence when we move from the voice to the testimonies is also a clear documentation of the value that the TRAUMA podcast attributes to testimonies. With no accompanying music, testimonies retune us to the soundscape of the people involved, securing sharper focus on those voices and greater empathy on the part of the listener.    Testimonies flesh out engaging, emotive narratives that also harbour accurate information of the stories involved (Theodosiadou). A multitude of intimacies exist in podcasting, and this intimacy contains the possibility to materially connect the listener to a story (fictional or factual; Karathanasopoulou). In the quote below there is a possible connection between the listener and the factual story as the narration becomes very realistic and absolutely grounded in the tragic events; the listener has a chance to envision the situation at the hospital, and this acoustic illustration possibly connects them more tightly to the actual story. From the Tempi train crash, the father of a young student-victim describes the most difficult moment while waiting that first night at the hospital: I dubbed that day 'a game of poker with death': in the hospital, whenever an ambulance arrived, everyone would rush towards it, hoping to find their loved ones injured or anxiously checking if the body bag was sealed, all racing to discover if their dear ones were dead. Victim relatives are heard sharing their private trauma-scapes and reporting on how difficult it has been to cope with such a traumatic event, and how these tragedies have influenced all their lives. Our attention, as podcast listeners deprived of any visual stimuli, is actively drawn both to the content of their sayings but also to the vocal utterances per se, in all their individual acoustic register of gaps or hesitations, of voice colour, pace, and rhythm:  it was incredibly difficult to endure such a situation. Most of us struggled through five years without any medication. But there are so many others that rely on very strong medications to cope. Fig. 1: Visual installation 58 Nails in Tempi, by artist Georgios Koftis. Tempi Valley, January 2024 (photo by Georgios Koftis). “We believe that there are more and more of us people not having a voice, contrary to what is depicted in the media” — Georgios Koftis. From the Individual to the Collective TRAUMA hosts survivors’ and victim relatives’ testimonies, maintaining the force and intimacy of the individual witness, yet not letting them flesh out a singular, eccentric, private disaster drama. Not only are individual voices balanced out with other voices of the various field experts on whom the documentary draws, but they are also amplified in echoes as we listen on to more (and all the more similar) testimonies. In this sense, we move from the private to the collective, and the documentary escapes the risk of over-emphasising personal disaster or aestheticising the pain of those directly involved. On a similar note, we hear both a relative of a victim of the Tempi crash and a relative of a victim in the Mati fires become equally cynical and accepting of the inevitability of accidents in life: in the collective unconsciousness we exist within, it was inevitable. Whether it be a boat, a ship, a plane, or a power station, it was destined to occur somewhere, and undoubtedly, it will happen again. We have grown somewhat cynical. After the Tempi train crash, when we gather during court breaks, we quip, "What's next, a plane crash?" We even start placing bets. It may come across as cynical, but considering what we have experienced and what we are likely to experience again, that's just how it is.  In the case of the Mati fire tragedy, many testimonies similarly focus on the absence of care or action from the Greek state and the feeling of aloneness in confronting such a preposterous disaster. Around 18:00, my mother gave me a call and informed me about a fire... There was no mention of it on TV. If only my family had been alerted just 5 minutes earlier, they could have jumped into the car and taken the route through Marathon Avenue, just like many others who managed to survive. We're talking about a mere distance of 500 metres, and the authorities had a clear view of the scene. They witnessed people burning, yet made no attempt to rescue them. There was no fire brigade in sight, not a single siren reached out ears, no loudspeakers blaring "Evacuate" to warn us, nothing at all. From the intense heat and lack of oxygen, we were beginning to lose our strength, my entire family. The relatives of the victims report on how difficult it has been to cope with such a traumatic event and how these tragedies have influenced all their lives. What can I say… The boy is seeing a psychologist to cope with the trauma. Whenever he sees us about to light a match, he thinks there’ll be a fire and quickly jumps to put it out. It’s so sad. These scars will never heal – they don't simply fade away no matter how much we wish they would. Joining voices from disparate disaster events, TRAUMA captures the “return and repeat” logics of trauma temporality, but, more importantly, meddles with and away from the “shock and freeze” effect of the singular event to reveal threads, echoes, re-doublings, and flashbacks that flesh a silently ongoing, collective trauma. Individual narratives of disaster are thus both solidified and pluralised in a sonic space that merges the private and the public, the singular and the plural, the rupture and the thread, allowing personal stories to open up into informed public conversations. Moving on in echoes and counterpoint polyphony, TRAUMA ultimately effects a “hearing different” of individual trauma testimonies, enabling the latter to surface less as closed echo chambers and more as resonant channels of shared wounds. The movement from the private to the collective is also repetitively referenced in the podcast per se. Both in the expert talks but also in the narrative script the notion of collective trauma is insistently mentioned: “erosion of trust in the state and the absence of catharsis” are considered to be the two main characteristics of collective trauma, according to the experts on the podcast and the journalist-narrator. This profound lack of trust that victims felt personally but also collectively surfaces as a resonant feeling, threading the two decades of fatal accidents that the TRAUMA podcast touches on.  Collective trauma is what occurs when a community or society is stripped of its essential functions, such as democracy, institutions, social solidarity, and, most importantly, the preservation of social bonds. Negligence can never be equated with acts that are considered felonious. Felonies encompass acts where the outcome is a result of deliberate and conscious actions. It is not only the outcome that is condemned, but also the intentional and rational behavior of the perpetrator. Conclusion The TRAUMA podcast revolutionises auditory experience both in tapping to unmute individual voices and thus offering acoustic justice, but also in terms of activating political listening. The acts of podcast creation and “political listening” can reinforce the audience’s political opposition to unjust practices (Rae et al.). TRAUMA is an example of a podcast that attempts to raise awareness of the Greek state’s failure to take relevant action, thus sensitising and mobilising listeners in ethical responsibility. Re-tuning listeners to trauma narratives and turning them into earwitnesses may fashion a space of empowerment. Writing of post-9/11 trauma and mourning and the ways in which the latter was quickly dismissed by U.S. authorities to allow for militant action, Judith Butler questions the typical equation of grief and trauma with passive numbness or stillness, and aptly observes that “suffering can yield an experience of humility, of vulnerability, of impressionability and dependence, and these can become resources if we do not resolve them too quickly” (149-50). Staying with trauma voices, as enabled in the case of TRAUMA, may help for “mourning otherwise” or for what Athena Athanasiou terms “agonistic mourning”, opening quietly militant spaces of ethical response-ability and caring, and even re-orienting trauma rupture and paralysis in actively “contending with dominant and prevailing systems that make and unmake bodies” (LaBelle 564). In the case of TRAUMA, letting listeners linger in the aural intimacy of the private trauma transforms listening into active earwitnessing and political contestation. The originality of the documentary lies in the weaving of the personal to the collective trauma, as well as in how this pain intertwines and defines the national collective trauma. Maybe this is also a hidden message that TRAUMA conveys: a silent ‘activism’ to make listeners participate in the personal and collective trauma and activate them in a positive and empowering way towards taking responsibility and work in line with the collective good (Theodosiadou). This brings the podcast genre to a new epoch, an epoch that transcends from audio blogging to silent activism. This concluding remark aligns with Karathanasopoulou & Williams's findings that non-visual media can provide a safe environment to reveal deeply personal experiences and, in some cases, form an example of “quiet activism”. 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