Every Tuesday, The duty offers a space to the creators of a periodical. This week, we offer you a text published in Disadvantagenumber 95 (winter 2023-2024).
If the trauma studies, since the 1990s, have analyzed in detail how trauma, once it has occurred in reality, can take an artistic form, there do not seem to be any studies that reverse this order, i.e. say which examine to what extent a novel, a song or a sculpture, in advance, risks causing trauma. To my knowledge, no scientific investigation has confirmed or even tested the hypothesis that a work of art can shake someone so strongly: according to what mechanisms, according to what predispositions, with what consequences, etc.
However, the use of trigger warnings (or trauma warnings) placed at the top of cultural productions is based on the premise that these works risk causing distress to certain vulnerable people, who must be protected. These indications which precede books, films or theatrical performances aim to warn fragile individuals of the psychological, but also moral (the two aspects are often poorly distinguished) danger to which they are exposed.
We defend the necessity of trauma warnings by explaining that they constitute an ethical practice whose aim is to give all people the possibility of approaching the works in the best possible way, that is to say without them are disturbed by potentially upsetting content. […]
However, recent scientific articles tend to show that trauma warnings are almost useless. According to a study by Jones, Bellet and McNally published in 2020 and based on a sample of 451 participants, no results suggest that warnings have a beneficial effect on people who have suffered trauma or those who are likely to suffer. of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Similarly, research by Kimble and colleagues published in 2021 indicates that, out of 355 university students, the vast majority are inclined to read a passage even if it is preceded by a trigger warning. It is true that, among them, people experiencing more PTSD symptoms report experiencing more discomfort when reading the passage announced.
However, the emotional disturbance diminishes significantly the next day and virtually disappears after two weeks. In short, according to the still fragmentary data collected so far, it seems that warnings have almost no impact.
Horror literature
However, the question continues to be debated: should we protect readers against the potentially harmful effects of books? In the context where such a problem arises, it seems to me quite remarkable that a category of works presents itself as seeking not to comfort people, to give them hope or to do them good, but on the contrary to cause a shock.
The avowed ambition of horror literature is to “traumatize” those who have the guts to delve into it, as if it took pleasure in piling up the most scandalous subjects to produce a list of trigger warnings as long as the wine list of a great restaurant. […]
Horror fiction causes a dislocation of beliefs, similar to that caused by trauma. And yet, there is a major difference between the two. This is because fiction is, precisely, fiction. The real trauma imposes itself as a nameless experience.
In Cathy Caruth’s classic model, trauma creates such a significant break in the psyche that it disconnects consciousness and language. Something happened, we know it, we remember part of it, but we can’t talk about it. It’s literally unspeakable. Trauma represents a core which is lodged in the psychic apparatus and which neither words nor narration succeed in digesting. […]
Horror literature does not cause trauma: it causes a shock which comes from a narrative structure, which is already language. This is the reason why, in my opinion, a literary work cannot cause trauma. It immediately belongs to a human register made up of symbols, of mediated representations. Fictional aggression, although it disturbs us like an uncontrolled madman, is prisoner of a fable straitjacket which contains its charge of violence. It is sayable, it is even already said. […]
As fiction, horror novels overturn our conceptions, they challenge our usual ways of seeing the world. They generate what we could call an “epistemic upheaval”. […] By challenging our fundamental thoughts, horror prevents beliefs from becoming rigid. It keeps us philosophically flexible.
The shock it causes decalcifies our mental structures, removing the crusts which, through the force of time and the weight of the days, threaten to petrify us beneath ready-made ideas. Horror twists us in a baroque way, imposing on us a flexibility that is almost unnatural, but which, ultimately, we need.
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