Instructor: Xafsa Ciise

This course offers a brief political history of the genealogical evolution of the idea of ‘trauma’ and its treatment in the Western medical tradition. Our analysis will foreground an internal tension which appears to organize this history: the idea that influence (or suggestion) is inextricable from the experience of subjection and domination. We’ll pay special attention to whether and how this discourse intersects with colonial and imperial constructions of difference.