ABSTRACT
Human experience is comprised of a collection of relational moments. These moments of relation or misrelation, be it the relation to another person or our own bodies, are central to what we experience as a whole life. As we wade through the early twenty-first century, with its parameters of physical limitation, fatigued isolation, and daily reminders of death, the experience of relational rupture, or misrelation, seems to elbow its way into the forefront of the human experience. In some instances, this misrelation is so profound that it feels like a rupture of relational experience. This is what the chapter refers to as trauma. Trauma can be linked to a specific event, or a series of events, and has been documented since the beginning of human history. However, the uncertainty and upheaval that characterises this contemporary experience reveals a particular confused and ambiguous series of interconnected misrelations. This chapter examines how the relational rupture that we can experience in trauma benefits from a Kierkegaardian reading. Drawing on the images of trauma evoked in Yehuda Amichai’s poetry, the chapter looks at how trauma can often cause us to self-censor, to isolate ourselves and break off authentic relation with others, that is, live in an experience of ruptured being. Engaging with contemporary trauma theory, the chapter suggests that Kierkegaard’s experience of becoming can help us to hold the undergoing of this particular kind of suffering as an experience of misrelation with the future-oriented hope of continued self-becoming.
