Post-Traumatic Culture: Injury and Interpretation in the Nineties

By Kirby Farrell and Professor Kirby Farrell

Book Overview

According to Kirby Farrell, the concept of trauma has shaped some of the central narratives of the 1990s--from the war stories of Vietnam vets to the video farewells of Heaven's Gate cult members, from apocalyptic sci-fi movies to Ronald Reagan's memoir, Where's the Rest of Me? In Post-traumatic Culture, Farrell explores the surprising uses of trauma as both an enabling fiction and an explanatory tool during periods of overwhelming cultural change.

Farrell's investigation begins in late Victorian England, when physicians invented the clinical concept of "traumatic neurosis" for an era that routinely categorized modern life as sick, degenerate, and stressful. He sees similar developments at the end of the twentieth century as the Vietnam war and feminism returned the concept to prominence as "post-traumatic stress syndrome." Seeking to understand the psychological dislocation associated with these two periods, Farrell analyzes conflicts produced by dramatic social and economic changes and suddenly expanded horizons. He locates parallels between the cultural fantasies of the 1890's in novels and stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard, H. G. Wells, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde, and novels and films of the 1990's that explore such issues as child sexual abuse, domestic violence, unemployment, racism, and apocalyptic rage. In their dependence on late-Victorian models, the cultural narratives of 1990s America imply a crisis of "storylessness" deeply implicated in the sense of injury that haunts the close of the twentieth century.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801857872
• ISBN13: 9780801857874
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 440 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Post-Traumatic Readers Unite

Kirby Farrell narrates this book like a pop-culture icon, yet he remains objective enough to sustain credibility. Heavily influenced by the works of Ernest Becker, Farrell compares seemingly uncomaprable films and novels through a filter of humanities' fears of death and desires for immortality. Farrell makes several strong arguments, yet gets caught up in a bit too many tangents for the general going public. This book is for a scholar. I know this sounds elitest, but this novel is for those who are well read, well versed, and comfortable dealing with topics that will make them feel uncomfortable because of their validity. Farrell has succeeded in created a fine piece of work worthy of coffee tables around the world...that is if you take your coffee black.