Traumatic Hermeneutics

Abstract

The chapter develops the notion of ‘traumatic hermeneutics’, which focusses on the problems of interpretation raised by trauma and traumatized writing, when the signs of pain may be far removed from the manifest material available to the interpreter. The chapter considers work in psychoanalysis and neuroscience, and also texts by survivors Semprun and Delbo, to demonstrate the inevitable risks and potential gains of interpretation when faced with texts which reveal or conceal trauma.