ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the nature of trauma; shows how it affects the self, which in turn is construed in several ultimately interconnected ways; and then uses this analysis to elaborate and support a feminist account of the relational self. The bodily nature of traumatic memory complicates a standard philosophical quandary concerning which of two criteria of identity, continuous body or continuous memories, should be used to determine personal identity over time. According to John Rawls, the possession of a "rational plan of life" is essential to personhood, or, at any rate, to moral personhood. The view of the self most central to ethics, as well as to social, political, and legal philosophy, is one that holds that the self is the locus of autonomous agency, that which freely makes choices and wills actions. Trauma survivors are dependent on empathie others who are willing to listen to their narratives.
