The first time I read that trauma is aporetic I rushed to my dictionary. An aporia is from the Greek, referring to an impasse, and generally refers to a paradox or perplexity that cannot be resolved. The term is frequently used in rhetoric; a Texan declaring that all Texans are liars would be a rhetorical aporia. Aporetic is the adjective, describing the condition of being caught in a paradox or contradiction.

Many, perhaps most, who have written about trauma from a literary perspective have seen trauma as aporetic. My comments are informed by Roger Luckhurst’s The Trauma Question, though mine is not so much a review as an appreciation of the issues he raises. It’s a good book.

For Cathy Caruth, doyenne of literary trauma theory, trauma is paradoxical or aporetic because its truth cannot be known at the time of its experience. Not just the traumatic event, but the trauma itself can only be understood after the fact, as it “returns to haunt the survivor later on.” (p. 4) Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub call this a crisis of history and truth, in which the most privileged observers of their own experience are unable to recount it. “The necessity of testimony . . . derives, paradoxically enough from the impossibility of testimony.” (p. 224, their emphasis).

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