The Limits of Theory in Trauma and Transcendence

Abstract

This introduction describes the challenge of how to think trauma in light of the field's burgeoning interdisciplinarity, and often its theoretical splintering. The introduction offers an overview of scholarship on trauma that has always been challenged by the temporal, affective, and corporeal dimensions of trauma itself, yet it has recently been rendered all the more complex by theoretical and methodological issues that have emerged for these disciplines in their attempts to think trauma. From distinctive disciplinary vectors, the introduction introduces the work of philosophers, social theorists, philosophical psychologists and theologians that considers the limits and prospects of theory when thinking trauma and transcendence, particularly as it relates to Continental Philosophy of Religion.