Mid-Term Response Essay
by Monika Błaszczak
E-mail: meb10135@nyu.edu

 

Memory, trauma, performance, and the complex interplay between these notions are discussed in various ways by the authors whose work we studied so far this term. These works shed light on the social, cultural, and political aspects of the work of remembering, in particular in the context of traumatic events.

In his groundbreaking text, Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through[1], Freud discusses how trauma is remembered through being acted out. The patient does not consciously remember the traumatic event but repeats it as an action. The way to overcome trauma, according to Freud, is to work through it, within a framework provided by a patient-therapist relationship. The therapist’s role is to support the patient in becoming acquainted with their resistance and working through it.

Cathy Caruth makes an important addition to Freud’s theory by pointing to the omnipresence of trauma within the social – in Caruth’s view, trauma does not only concern soldiers returning from war, but a much larger population, including survivors of rape, natural catastrophes, child abuse, and other forms of violence causing the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder[2]. The expansion of the meaning of trauma led to a profound rupture in the understanding of such terms as psychological health, diagnosis, cure, and pathology.

Bessel van der Kolk’s innovative and bestselling book, The Body Keeps the Score[3], brings embodiment to the forefront in the understanding of trauma. In a series of essays, case studies, and accessible scientific explanations of the workings of memory, van der Kolk explains the reality of trauma as a bodily phenomenon. Providing evidence on the ineffectiveness of antidepressants and the insufficiency of talk therapy as a sole cure, the author stresses the importance of embodied practices in the healing of trauma. These at the time controversial opinions led to van der Kolk’s temporary exclusion from the scientific community, eventually granting him the status of a world-renowned trauma expert.

In Truth and Repair[4], Judith Herman complicates the matter with her compelling argument that trauma is never just personal. In her analysis of domestic violence, Herman points to the inevitable implication of all individual stories in a larger context of systemic oppression. In Truth and Repair, Herman adds justice as the last stage in the process of recovery to her existing discussion of the topic. In her view, justice is a needed element for a victim to fully recover from a traumatic experience.

Paul Connerton distinguishes between two different types of social practices of remembering: inscription and incorporation[5]. Incorporation takes place when an embodied form of remembering is utilized, in the forms of rituals, performances, and habits. Inscription involves various forms of writing, in which the text produced exists independently of the body that produced it and isn’t determined by the same kind of ephemerality as incorporation.

The intergenerational aspect of memory is discussed in Marianne Hirsch’s work[6]. Analyzing the stories of people whose parents experienced deeply traumatizing events, Hirsch examines the impact that violence has on the offspring of its victims, revealing trauma as always interwoven within the familial, communal, and social fabric, and surpassing the individual.

Performance, in its diverse forms, plays an important role in the texts and objects studied in our class. The authors introduce the understanding of trauma from an embodied perspective, discuss trauma as a performance of social interdependence, and contemplate the patient’s behavior in therapy as a form of performing or “acting out” their traumatic experiences. The artists whose work we studied propose a range of ideas on the themes of memory and trauma through their creations.

Augusto Boal’s profound understanding of memory, trauma, and performativity becomes evident in his work with Theatre of the Oppressed[7]. Boal aims to ignite a sense of agency in the audience members-participants, who are invited to act out scenarios of personal and political importance and to actively come up with solutions to them through embodiment. Boal’s method proposes theatre as a place of alchemical transformation of personal trauma into political action and healing.

Carlos Martiel utilizes his own body as a material of experimentation with topics of remembering, relationality, pain, belonging, and violence[8]. In his breath-taking pieces, he reveals tensions at play within trauma as embodied and spiritual, personal and communal, political and social.

During our meeting with Leda Martins, we learned about her concept of Spiral Time[9] and Congado ceremonies, which cherish the mythical element within the worldly. Dances, songs, and rituals take place as celebrations of the sacredness of the world.

In my work, I research the body as a site of memory and dancing as a healing tool. I propose the idea of dancing as movement poetics: a form of moving that enables the dancing body to experience memories, sensations, desires, and relationships as sources of knowledge and vitality. Dancing expands the moving body’s ability to feel, enabling confrontation with the complex landscapes of emotions, memories, and longings, and integrate painful elements such as traumatic events into life narratives.

In my understanding of trauma as embodied, I deeply resonate with Bessel van der Kolk’s work. When I first read The Body Keeps the Score[10], it provided me with a theoretical framework from which I could explore my artistic intuition. Since 2018, I have been researching the intersection of hauntology, embodiment, and choreography, and designing a practice called Soliloquy – Hauntological Somatics[11]. I am fascinated with how non-linear views of time enable a deeper understanding of trauma as disruptive of the present moment and alive in the flesh even when the danger is no longer there. In that sense, Jacques Derrida[12], Karen Barad[13], and Leda Martins[14] might all agree that time isn’t simply a succession of past and present into the future but rather functions in ways that are far complex and less determinate.

The authors mentioned in this essay shed light on memory, trauma, and performance. The encounters with those texts help me gain more depth in my research and trust that performance allows for transmission of knowledge, as well as bodily and spiritual transformation.

[1] Sigmund Freud, “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-1913): The Case of Schreber, Papers on Technique and Other Works, ed. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1958).
[2] Cathy Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995).
[3] Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Penguin Books, 2014).
[4] Judith Herman, Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice (New York: Basic Books, Hachette Book Group 2023).
[5] Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
[6] Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).
[7] Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed (New York: Theater Communications Group, 1985).
[8] Carlos Martiel, Lazos de sangre (Bloodline), performance and photography, 2010, (Havana, Cuba), https://www.carlosmartiel.net/bloodline/.
[9] Leda Martins, Spiral Time: Memory, Trauma and Performance (talk, Memory, Trauma, and Performance class, Performance Studies, New York University Tisch School of the Arts, New York, September 18th 2023).
[10] Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Penguin Books, 2014).
[11] Monika Błaszczak, Soliloquy (somatic practice), 2023, https://www.monikablaszczak.com/soliloquy.
[12] Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: the state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the New international (New York: Routledge, 1994).
[13] Karen Barad, “Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come,” Derrida Today 3, no. 2 (2010): 240.
[14] Leda Martins, Spiral Time: Memory, Trauma and Performance (talk, Memory, Trauma, and Performance class, Performance Studies, New York University Tisch School of the Arts, New York, September 18th 2023).