Event date: Friday 2 October 2015, 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Location: Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Blandijnberg 2, Faculty Room

This one-day workshop seeks to compare the nature and effects of visual representations of trauma in diverse media, ranging from film and photography to illustrations and comics. Trauma is used here in the broad sense of a lasting psychological wound. This is juxtaposed to haunting in order to include the recurrence of disturbing thoughts and memories which, while not extreme enough to be labeled as trauma, reflect or cause emotional turmoil. Considering the two – not mutually exclusive – kinds of images will facilitate the exploration of visualizations of the inexpressible, psychic states in different contexts while also avoiding the inflation and trivialization of the notion of trauma criticized by Wulf Kansteiner.

The much-touted inexpressibility of trauma echoes the problems of expression inherent in language highlighted by, among others, Jacques Derrida and the Yale School (see Roger Luckhurst’s The Trauma Question) and, more recently, Giorgio Agamben. On the other hand, as Thomas Elsaesser suggests, trauma theory attempts to chart new “theoretical and political ground about the status of fantasy” (“Postmodernism as Mourning Work,” Screen 42.2 [2001], 194). By concentrating on images and the levels of reality or fantasy they indulge in, this workshop aims to explore their particular, silent role in expressing trauma and damaged or emotionally charged psychological states.

20-minute papers addressing one or more of the following aspects will be especially welcome:

• visualizations of the mind and psyche
• limits of the notions of trauma and cultural trauma
• ethics and aesthetics of (re-)presenting images that are disturbing or reflect psychological disturbance
• sociopolitical dynamics of visual renditions of individual and collective psychological distress
• recurrence of motifs and tropes, including revenants of the Holocaust and the imitation of other media
• the role of images in archiving, cementing, or resurrecting memories as well as ‘working through’ or coming to terms with trauma

Please send bios and abstracts of 300 to 500 words in English or in French to Maaheen Ahmed by March 31, 2015.