Trauma as Belief in a "Dangerous World": Obscuring Systemic Violence in Social Work Discourse

Overview: Using critical discourse analysis, we explore the particular meanings of the widely-used concept of “trauma” in contemporary social work discourse. Working from the perspective that all concepts do political work, we assert that the critical re-examination of trauma is a necessary task for identifying unintended consequences of the word’s usage.Proposal text: Background
Trauma has become a key-word (Williams, 1976) in social work. Since Herman’s 1992 Trauma and Recovery, which expanded the application of the term beyond the context of war, the concept has been critical in naming the experiences of those affected by various kinds of violence, from genocide and slavery to domestic violence. Our aim in this work of feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis, grounded in the understanding of discourse as “modes of power” (Haraway, 1989, p. 289), was not to interrogate the salience of the concept but to critically examine its function: what does “trauma” do in social work? What are the logics underlying the concept? What are the political implications for drawing upon the discourses of trauma?

Methods
We searched the 30 top social work journals identified by Hodge and colleagues (2021) for peer-reviewed articles containing the word “trauma” or “traumatic” in the title, published in English between 2010-2020. The search netted 197 articles, from which we drew a randomized sample of 30. Using methods of close reading and interpretive discourse analysis derived from Michel Foucault and Jaques Derrida and repurposed by feminist scholars Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak, we examined the sample for the specific meanings assigned to “trauma” and analyzed the implications for those utilizations.

Results
We found three key results. First, the usage of “trauma,” rarely anchored in a specific definition, varied greatly not only across the articles examined but often within a single article which, for example, might use the term to indicate both violent events as well as the emotional responses to them. Second, there was also a lack of clarity on why certain experiences counted as “trauma,” while others did not, and just as importantly, why certain responses to traumatic events are considered appropriate while others are deemed disordered. And thirdly, even as “trauma” signals harm originating in systems and structures outside the individual, research on trauma often settles the responsibility for surmounting it upon the individual, who, rather than the system of violence itself, is constructed as both the “problem” of trauma and the target of repair. In the discursive sense, such usages of “trauma” function to actively conceal the structural contours of violence.

Implications
While the modern iteration of the concept of trauma has roots in the feminist anti-domestic violence movement, many of the applications of the concept in contemporary social work research literature demonstrate definitional contradictions. The inscription of personal pathology into experiences of trauma and an individualized understanding of both violence and its aftermaths are antithetical to its contemporary aims.

Working from the perspective that all concepts do political work—that it is possible for individuals and groups to “become empowered by trauma’s discourse at the same time they become its subjects” (Million, 2013, p. 94)— we assert that the critical re-examination of trauma, as a valued concept in feminist social work and beyond, is a necessary task for identifying unintended consequences of the word’s usage and for imagining new conceptualizations and interpretations that may better serve its liberatory aims.