Skip to main content

Social Theory and Cultural Trauma

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Cultural Sociology ((CULTSOC))

Abstract

In this chapter, I use the example of three significant social theory texts, Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, and Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust in order to illustrate the difference between personal-, collective-, and cultural trauma. I also illustrate how personal trauma can impact the construction and representation of social theory.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

References

  • Adorno, Theodor. 1981 [1967]. Prisms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Adorno, Theodor. 1991. Notes to Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Adorno, Theodor. 2010. Guilt and Defense. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Adorno, Theodor, Else Frenkel-Brunswick, Daniel J. Levinson, and Nevitt Sanfo. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper & Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Jeffrey. 2004a. Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma. In Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, ed. Jeffrey Alexander, Ronald Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil Smelser, and Piotr Sztompka. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, Jeffrey. 2004b. On the Construction of Moral Universals: The ‘Holocaust’ from War Crime to Trauma Drama. In Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, ed. Jeffrey Alexander, Ronald Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil Smelser, and Piotr Sztompka. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Mark M. 2008. Documents, Photography, Postmemory: Alexander Kluge, W. G. Sebald, and the German Family. Poetics Today 29 (1): 129–153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Zygmunt. 1989. Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caruth, Cathy. 1996. Unclaimed Experience. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erikson, Kai. 1994. A New Species of Trouble. New York: Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eyerman, Ronald. 2001. Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eyerman, Ronald. 2008. The Assassination of Theo van Gogh: From Social Drama to Cultural Trauma. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Eyerman, Ronald. 2011. The Cultural Sociology of Political Assassination. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fassin, Didier, and Richard Rechtman. 2009. The Empire of Trauma. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freud, Sigmund. 1967 [1939]. Moses and Monotheism. New York: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giesen, Bernhard. 2004. The Trauma of the Perpetrators: The Holocaust as the Traumatic Reference of German National Identity. In Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, ed. Jeffrey Alexander, Ronald Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil Smelser, and Piotr Sztompka. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grass, Gunter. 2009 [1959]. The Tin Drum. New York: Harcourt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Habermas, Jurgen. 1975. Legitimation Crisis. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Habermas, Jurgen. 1987. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hartman, Geoffrey H. 1996. The Longest Shadow. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heins, Volker. 2011. Beyond Friend and Foe. Leiden: Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hochhuth, Rolf. 1964. The Deputy. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Herder and Herder.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. 2002. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan, E. Ann. 2005. Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kipphardt, Heinar. 1997 [1964]. In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer. New York: Hill and Wang.

    Google Scholar 

  • LaCapra, Dominick. 2001. Writing History Writing Trauma. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leys, Reys. 2000. Trauma: A Genealogy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 1984. The Postmodern Condition. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muller-Doohm, Stefan. 2005a. Adorno: A Biography. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muller-Doohm, Stefan. 2005b. Theodor W. Adorno and Jurgen Habermas—Two Ways of Being a Public Intellectual. European Journal of Social Theory 8 (3): 269–280.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olick, Jeffrey K. 2003. What Does It Mean to Normalize the Past? Official Memory in German Politics Since 1989. In States of Memory, ed. Jeffrey K. Olick. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rabinbach, Anson. 1997. In the Shadow of Catastrophe. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenblatt, Louise M. 1978. The Reader, the Text, the Poem. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rothberg, Michael. 1997. After Adorno: Culture in the Wake of Catastrophe. New German Critique 72: 45–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Said, Edward. 2004. Freud and the Non-European. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schlant, Ernestine. 1999. The Longest Silence. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smelser, Neil. 2004. Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma. In Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, ed. Jeffrey Alexander, Ronald Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil Smelser, and Piotr Sztompka. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Reijen, Willam, and Jan Bransen. 2002. The Disappearance of Class History in ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’. In Dialectic of Enlightenment, ed. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weiss, Peter. 2010 [1965]. The Investigation. London: Marion Boyars.

    Google Scholar 

  • White, Hayden. 1990. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wiggershaus, Rolf. 1995. The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Significance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ziege, E. 2009. Antisemitismus und Gesellschaflstheorie: Die Frankfurter Schule im amerikanischen Exil. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zolkos, Magdalena. 2010. Reconciling Community and Subjective Life. New York: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ron Eyerman .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Eyerman, R. (2019). Social Theory and Cultural Trauma. In: Memory, Trauma, and Identity. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13507-2_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13507-2_5

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-13506-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-13507-2

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics