ABSTRACT
This chapter shows the range and heterogeneity of cultural trauma theory by exploring some of the most important issues to mark the field since the late twentieth century. It deals with considering the misgivings that the historian Dominick LaCapra has expressed about what he perceives as Cathy Caruth and Shoshana Felman excessive fixation on the symptomatic acting-out of trauma, which collapses temporal distinctions and thereby threatens to inhibit action in the present. The chapter aims to demonstrate, the emergence of cultural trauma theory has led to a growing interest in forms of secondary or vicarious witnessing, transgenerational or prosthetic memory, and collective, national, or cultural traumas. A number of theorists have begun to nuance and develop the notion of transference, analysing its transgenerational reach and examining the changing technologies that might facilitate vicarious traumatization. Kai Erikson’s experience with traumatized groups lends a specificity to his discussion that is lacking in Caruth’s account of transcultural trauma.
