Trauma and Memory

Trauma and Memoryexplores different dimensions of trauma, both its relationship to the social sphere and to group identity, in order to open up new approaches to trauma from a healing perspective. The book's specific focus is doubly unique: first, because of its interest in the tension between collective and individual trauma (in trauma as socially constructed and related to identities of ethnicity, nationality, gender, and class); and second, because of its interest in the legal and medical professions (in their construction of trauma, their ways of treating it, their failures, and even their production of trauma).Trauma and Memoryreflects the ways in which, over the last several decades, a growing interest in the social and cultural contexts of law and medicine has transformed the study of both these professions. The authors provide new readings of social and political phenomenasuch as immigration, public health, gender discrimination, and transitional justicein terms of trauma. Finally, they address the therapeutic dimensions of trauma and their relationship to reconciliation via alternative processes such as mediation, truth committees, and other new forms of justice.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science and Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor at Amherst College. Nadav Davidovitch is a Lecturer in the Division of Public Health, Ben Gurion University, Israel. Michal Alberstein is associate visiting law professor at Fordham University School of Law and an adjunct professor at Cardozo Law School.