Cultural Trauma and a Network Society: Methodological Considerations

The article aims to discuss the possibility of using the concept of cultural trauma and its connection with the idea of a network society. To achieve this aim, it is necessary to consider critical objections to the use of the idea of cultural trauma. First, there is the question of possible losses in the transition from individual psychology to collective experience. Second, if trauma is the name for events or experiences which are retrospectively uncontrollable, there is a contradiction between the gap in memory resulting from trauma and the globalization and mediatization of objects with a traumatic status. The solution of this list of problems requires analyzing the specific features of cultural trauma. Such features can be summarized as follows: a threat to group, not to individual existence; destruction of cultural values or symbols shared by the group; indirect effects of traumatic objects. It is noted that the statement about the contradiction between the uncontrollability and inexpressibility of traumatic experience and the mediatization of cultural trauma should, first of all, take into account the degree to which cultural trauma is constructed. Creation of trauma always involves selective construction and public representation, which is possible only through the mass media. It is also reasonable to assume that the constructed trauma can act as a substitute for a real trauma. Such an approach allows interpreting all forms of fixation of trauma and its study (including mediatization) as a set of symptoms and thereby reconcile the thesis of inexpressibility with mediatization. Finally, the discursive character of cultural trauma implies its media existence. Moreover, then it can be argued that cultural trauma is only possible through mediatization. It is stated that the media character of cultural trauma allows using the idea of a network to study the sources of trauma, its specificity and ways of working with it. The efficiency of using the actor-network theory for the study of trauma is substantiated. The advantages of the actor-network theory are associated, firstly, with the possibility of a painless translation of other approaches into the language of the theory. Secondly, this theory allows taking into account the aspects of heterogeneity, eventfulness and dynamism inherent in traumatic objects. Thus, it allows exploring more diverse aspects of the existence of the modern social world than other theories do. Thirdly, this theory allows treating the media as one of the actors, i.e., as one of the participants in the creation of trauma, and not just аs a translator of traumatic experience.

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