Trauma, Hysteria, Philosophy includes two essays which investigate philosophically the psychoanalytic categories of trauma and hysteria; each essay seeks a new way to understand such varied concepts as the dialectical theater and the linguistic turn. Media Identity is an attempt to reinvestigate the concept of hysteria as a philosophical notion. Beginning with the roots of Freud’s development of the unconscious, moving to Bergson’s concept of ontological memory and the body, and utilizing Deleuze’s work on the virtual this essay attempts to navigate and describe the possibilities of identity in an age of ubiquitous media. Far from accepting a pessimistic outlook on the state of the subject this work considers the possibility of an aesthetics of hysteria. Turn: theories of trauma in the age of linguistics explores the not-so-implicit relationship between the “linguistic turn†in critical theory and the growing field of trauma studies. Drawing from psychoanalysis, critical theory, linguistic philosophy and literature, Kamens discusses the ways in which language and trauma have grown increasingly interdependent. Hannes Charen is an independent scholar, writer and book designer based in Brooklyn, New York. He has his Masters in Philosophy from the European Graduate School and is currently a Ph.D. candidate. Sarah Kamens is a Ph.D. student in Media and Communications at the European Graduate School, where she also received her M.A., and in Clinical Psychology at Fordham University. During the past few years, she lived in Palestine and Israel, where she conducted psychosocial research and worked in film.
