Introduction

The nexus of traumatic suffering and Holocaust memory has given rise to a domain of psychosocial inquiry, multidimensional in scope, that not only seeks a zero-point in the abyss of genocide as a scar into modernity itself but charts across time its traumatic effects intergenerationally. Modern subjectivity, as erased or altered in the void of trauma, mirrors historical and cultural trauma, where shared realities are both simultaneously eclipsed and born. For the history of ideas, Hacking adopts Foucauldian distance that grounds the a priori conditions of psychological notions of memory, multiple personality, and trauma – the latter as a way of "making up" a certain sort of person. In the appearance of trauma, the blending of Heideggerian sensibilities and Foucauldian criticality will deepen the analysis under consideration. Trauma has conceptually and impressively served scholarship seeking to make sense of post-colonial oppression and suffering.