The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood / Didier Fassin, Richard Rechtman, Rachel Gomme.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fassin, Didier, Author.

Rechtman, Richard, Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press, [2026]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Today we are accustomed to psychiatrists being summoned to scenes of terrorist attacks, natural disasters, war, and other tragic events to care for the psychic trauma of victims--yet it has not always been so. The very idea of psychic trauma came into being only at the end of the nineteenth century and for a long time was treated with suspicion. The Empire of Trauma tells the story of how the traumatic victim became culturally and politically respectable, and how trauma itself became an unassailable moral category. Basing their analysis on a wide-ranging ethnography, Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman examine the politics of reparation, testimony, and proof made possible by the recognition of trauma. They study the application of psychiatric victimology to victims of the 1995 terrorist bombings in Paris and the 2001 industrial disaster in Toulouse; the involvement of humanitarian psychiatry with both Palestinians and Israelis during the second Intifada; and the application of the psychotraumatology of exile to asylum seekers victimized by persecution and torture. Revealing how trauma has come to authenticate the suffering of victims, The Empire of Trauma provides critical perspective on some of the moral and political issues at stake in the contemporary world.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface to the English Edition

Introduction: A New Language of the Event

PART ONE: The Reversing of the Truth

CHAPTER ONE A Dual Genealogy

CHAPTER TWO The Long Hunt

CHAPTER THREE The Intimate Confession

CHAPTER FOUR An End to Suspicion

PART TWO: The Politics of Reparation

CHAPTER FIVE Psychiatric Victimology

CHAPTER SIX Toulouse

PART THREE: The Politics of Testimony

CHAPTER SEVEN Humanitarian Psychiatry

CHAPTER EIGHT Palestine

PART FOUR: The Politics of Proof

CHAPTER NINE The Psychotraumatology of Exile

CHAPTER TEN Asylum

CONCLUSION The Moral Economy of Trauma

Bibliography

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed March 30 2026)

ISBN:

9780691296715