Toward A Global History of Trauma

Abstract

In a coda to the volume, Mark Micale reflects on the larger cultural context of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Micale argues that writings by scholars in Japan, Korea, Russia and Australia can enrich our understanding and conceptualization of trauma and trauma studies. Micale encourages Western scholars to transcend international and cultural boundaries in order to point the way towards a next generation of historical thinking on trauma in a globalized context. Trauma scholarship, like the diagnostic entity PTSD, Micale argues, is still expanding to find new approaches to the varieties of traumatic experience. He highlights new paths for moving beyond trauma as a specialized medical phenomenon, and he encourages scholars to analyze our culture’s growing obsessions with a ‘trauma industry’ that mainstreams discussions of crisis, victimhood and memory.