NOTES TO PAGES 557–62war, which led to the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Like the He-
brew word for the Holocaust (Shoah),Nakbahcorresponds to the English term for ‘‘catastrophe.’’
- Freud’s analysis of trauma is perhaps most clearly formulated inBeyond the Pleasure Princi-
ple, ed. and trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1961), where psychic trauma is defined as a
wound in the protective membrane that shields the psyche from external stimuli, resulting in the
failed binding of certain events to images or symbols that may be stored in memory and then
elaborated and communicated through language. Psychic trauma is thus not only an experience of
violent victimization or intense suffering but also the occurrence of a failure to represent and
symbolize experience. As I will mention later, on an individual level this failure may lead to a
compulsion to repeat traumatic events, which Freud linked to a ‘‘death principle’’ that drives us
retroactively to attempt to ‘‘undo’’ trauma. Some authors (e.g., Vamik Volkan) evoke a similar
process to explain mutual violence between ethnic groups whose identity narratives are marked by
events passed on as ‘‘unspeakable.’’ - Examples of such spaces include schools, national commemoration ceremonies (e.g., Holo-
caust Day), the rhetoric of political parties, public debates on questions related to security and
Israeli-Palestinian relations, the media, the world of art and culture, and so forth. - See, e.g., Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub,Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature,
Psychoanalysis, and History(New York: Routledge, 1991). - Derrida develops the theme of sovereignty and of its relation to ‘‘ipseity’’ in several of his
works, most recentlyRogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), esp. pt. 1. - Freud,Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 40–49.
- See, e.g.: Judith Herman,Trauma and Recovery(New York: Basic Books, 1992); Ronnie
Janoff-Bulman,Shattered Assumptions: Toward a New Psychology of Trauma(New York: The Free
Press, 1992); or the standard definition of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder given by the
American Psychiatric Association,Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders, vol. 3
(DSM-III) (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1980). - Vamik Volkan,Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism(Boulder, Colo.: Westview,
1997). - As concerns Israeli society, see, e.g., Edna Lomsky-Feder and Eyal Ben-Ari’s ‘‘Trauma,
Therapy and Responsibility: Psychology and War in Contemporary Israel,’’ inThe Practice of War,
ed. Monica Boeck, Aparna Rao, and Michael Bollig (Oxford: Berghahn Books, forthcoming). - On the notion of ‘‘hospitality of visitation’’ as the ‘‘im-possible’’ horizon of the political
in democratic contexts, see, e.g., Derrida’s conversation with Giovanna Borradori in the aftermath
of 9/11 in G. Borradori,Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Ju ̈rgen Habermas and Jacques
Derrida(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 128–29. - This is in contrast to some recent elaborations of ethical and political projects that build
upon trauma theory, particularly in literary criticism, cultural studies, and political theory. An
example of such literature is Kelly Oliver,Witnessing: Beyond Recognition(Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2001). - For a review of different meta-theoretical approaches to the notion of human rights (nota-
bly universalist liberalism, communitarianism, cosmopolitan pragmatism, and antifoundationalist
theory), see Tim Dunne and Nicholas J. Wheeler, eds.,Human Rights in Global Politics(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999). - As Levinas puts it, ‘‘If there were no order of Justice, there would be no limit to my
responsibility’’ (‘‘Philosophy, Justice, and Love,’’ inEntre Nous: Thinking of the Other, trans. Barbara
Harshav, with Michael B. Smith [New York: Columbia University Press, 1998], 105).
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