Arts of healing : Cultural narratives of trauma.

This book proposes a return to the resources of the humanities in an attempt to investigate, reflect on, remember or imagine old and new arts of healing at the intersection of critical and cultural theory, psychoanalysis, philosophy, neurology, literature, the visual arts, film studies and gender and queer studies. It interrogates any understanding of healing as the restoration of a lost wholeness, the end of subjective or communal crisis, the retrieval of personal or national sovereignty.

The first part of the book pays tribute to the centrality of the Holocaust in the emergence and development of trauma studies, while insisting on the need to break away from what Karyn Ball has called 'the disciplinary imaginary' that has determined 'an "appropriate" approach to the Holocaust.

The second part brings together essays that exemplify the transcultural turn in trauma studies, shifting the emphasis onto the global scenes of war, violence, terror, forced migration and human trafficking, and colonial and neo-colonial politics.

The third part marks a shift away from public, collective concerns, concentrating instead on testimonies and theoretical reflections on intimate forms of healing. Bringing together chapters that focus on different media and genres, this part looks at more personal responses to collective trauma as well as at traumatic experiences that are the product of family and intergenerational dynamics and gender- or sexuality-related violence. Given the focus of the chapters, psychoanalytic theory is (explicitly or implicitly) a key framework within and against which the authors seek to articulate distinct narratives of healing.

By foregrounding the commitment to repair, healing, resistance and care, the collection opens up the aporetic narratives that have dominated trauma studies to alternative possibilities and conceptions of the future, fostering a broad interrogative and interdisciplinary dialogue in order to develop unfamiliar approaches to the psychic crisis produced by trauma