Welcome back readers!
I was amazed by the number of great blogs that we had this week. I think that we all reflected on the topic of trauma in one way or another, so I just want to share with you some of the brilliant perspectives that I got to read.
When people talk to us about 9/11 and what we remember about that day, our response is almost always: “I was about three or four years old, so I don’t remember much about it”. This is the point that Devon brings about in her blog; she says that even though she does not remember September 11, she does remember September 12. Devon explains that her mother is a flight attendant, and after the World Trade Center was attacked, she felt the atmosphere around her change due to fear culture. She recalls how she thought that her mom’s occupation was really cool, and how by this one event, her perspective on her mom’s job changed drastically to the point where her mom’s safety was no longer a given. As a result, Devon expresses her rooted dislike of fear culture, and what it has done to society in terms of segregation and safety. Personally, I agree with Devon in her stand on fear culture because it only manages to put barriers between people based on their looks and their ethnicities. We’ve gotten to the point where we put labels on fear, because as Devon explained “it teaches us that flying in planes is risky and that Islamic people are bad”.
Furthermore, through Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” we witness trauma and fear culture through the eyes of a child, which is what Ramon talks about in his blog. But he talks about a different child, a child who lived the trauma in the flesh for several years, and offered a live account of everything that happened to her, that child is Anne Frank. One of Ramon’s most interesting points brings about the difference of trauma seen by an adult and a child, and how trauma is not really unspeakable, since Anne Frank delivered a day-to-day testimony of her life as a Jew in World War II. When we talked about trauma in class, we took into consideration Oskar’s perspective on “The Worst Day” and how he never mentioned the actual event because it was unbearable to do so. But here we have a child, whose innocence was not stolen by the trauma of the war, but kept fresh in her diary by the real account of the small beauties of her daily life. Because as Ramon puts it “through her words we see conflict that extends far beyond the closeminded focus on trauma, we see love, conflict, family, friends…”. Trauma is not something we can avoid by not talking about it, trauma is present within the very soul of the person who experiences it, it is only held captive until we decide to let it scream.
Holding on to the topic of the innocence within trauma from a child’s point of view, we encounter Robert’s blog on the different perceptions of trauma between Canada and Europe. Robert brings a fresh and honest portrayal of Canada’s stand on trauma and how it never compares two different events based on how many people died. According to Robert, “the fact that here we can agree that everyone suffered who has experienced trauma on any scale is a testament to how young and innocent Canada is”. Canadians express their empathy towards everyone in the world without judging who is suffering and by how much, in the same way a child would. Whereas, as Robert further explains, Europeans compare each tragic event to the ones they suffered from in the past, such as the Holocaust or the Russian Civil War. European trauma deals with numbers, ethnicities, and dislike towards different cultures and nations. Their view has become clouded by their previous experiences, and that has managed to let them perceive trauma with an inhumane perspective where everyone deserves a different sentiment depending on where they are from.
I would like to finish this post by looking into Lauren’s blog on “What is our Common Interest?” Putting trauma on the spotlight, Lauren takes some time to examine Butler’s argument on the “framing narrative” of trauma and on who is allowed to become a victim of an event. Lauren explains that after the events of 9/11, the tragedy became extremely Americanized, to the point where “Non-American nationals and illegal workers who were among the victims, were sidelined or excluded all together from this public grievance”. It has become evident that victims are carefully selected when it comes to remembering them, because if the media chooses not to recognize them, then they do not deserve to be mourned. Lauren further challenges Butler’s believe that once we all realize that we are vulnerable, then we will become interdependent on one another. I agree with Lauren in her comment on how “utopian” Butler’s believe is, because our world will never stop to be divided due to the rising conflict that poses a threat to society every day. It might be awful to think about the world in this way, but it is only the truth, and the only way it can start to change is when we realize that all the hatred and the destructiveness is within our own selves.
All of your blogs were outstanding, guys! Keep up the amazing work!
-Mariana