Didier Fassin

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.

Western governments and elites have supported the destruction of Gaza, silencing the Palestinians and those who speak on their behalf.Providing a record of the Gaza War’s first six months, drawing on a rich range of sources, Didier Fassin examines how Palestine’s history of occupation and oppression has been negated. In its place, a false vocabulary and grammar afflicts the mainstream media. Under these conditions, a call for a ceasefire or a reference to humanitarian conventions is enough to prompt the ever-ready accusation of antisemitism. Censorship and self-censorship abound. Reporters covering the conflict routinely treat the value of human life as if it were dependent on ethnicity. Dissenting voices are silenced with specious reference to the Holocaust or the supposed existential threats to Israel. Fassin analyses the geopolitical and economic stakes in the Middle East, concluding that the events following the 7th of October have shown the West devoid of the values and principles proclaimed to be foundational.