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Trauma Is Political

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Trauma, Culture, and PTSD
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Abstract

Among several possible ways of looking at trauma as a political issue, this chapter views political trauma in terms of the inability of marginalized groups to use the social and cultural resources of a society in order to protect themselves from the effects of chronic trauma. One of the main problems in thinking about trauma as a political issue is to figure out how an experience that can only happen to individuals (groups cannot be traumatized, at least not in the same way as people) can become a group experience. D.W. Winnicott is the theorist who is most helpful in this regard.

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Alford, C.F. (2016). Trauma Is Political. In: Trauma, Culture, and PTSD. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57600-2_3

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