ABSTRACT
Much of twentieth-century trauma theory describes how individuals respond to single horrific events, from sexual abuse to the Holocaust. According to these models, a traumatic experience destroys the subject's cognitive ability to process the trauma he or she has undergone. To call attention to Ireland's systemic traumas, then, requires Morgan to step outside the discourse of trauma that has been monopolized by the English and Anglo-Irish paranoia. In rethinking the "cure" of Irish trauma, Morgan takes up the questions of mimesis and temporality that will also occupy post-Freudian trauma studies but with a different stance. In focusing on the nation that could be in the future rather than the nation that existed in the past, Morgan is also rethinking mimesis as both a literary strategy and a response to systemic trauma. In classical trauma theory, the relationship of trauma and mimesis is contentious and complicated.
