ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a performative politics of trauma culture and the cinematic portrayal of trauma. The idea of trauma as a 'language of the global event' provides a conceptual mechanism whereby both the event and victim of trauma are rendered as contestable – and therefore political – subjects. Trauma has become a touchstone for the wider ethical dilemma of how we understand and seek to mitigate pain in global market life. The Batman section and the moral self will interrogate the role of trauma in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. The Batman trilogy performs trauma as a 'normal' framework for thinking about market life as a set of choices made by the moral self. The performance of the traumatic market subject is not limited to one or another discourse that circulates at the time. Trauma can serve as a language of social critique both upholding the cause of the state in exceptional times and questioning the state's response to traumatic events.
