Post-Trauma. Towards a New Definition?

Abstract

According to Žižek, contemporary approaches to trauma disregard Lacan’s most fundamental statement: trauma has always already occurred. To state that trauma has already occurred means that it cannot occur by chance, that every empirical accident or shock impairs an already or a previously wounded subject. In this text, I want to chance a thought that would definitely escape the always already’s authority, which would give chance a chance. The chapter goes on to compare the Freudian/Lacanian view of brain trauma versus psychic trauma with contemporary neurobiological and socio-political views on trauma.