The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood Book

Preface to the English Edition xi Introduction: A New Language of the Event 1

PART ONE: The Reversing of the Truth 13
CHAPTER ONE: A Dual Genealogy 25
The Significance of a Controversy 27
The Birth of Trauma 30
Labor Laws 34
CHAPTER TWO: The Long Hunt 40
Cowardice or Death 41
The Brutalization of Therapy 43
After the War 50
A French History 54
CHAPTER THREE: The Intimate Confession 58
War Psychoanalysis 59
A Profitable Sickness 64
Victims of the Self 66
The Issue of Survival 70
CHAPTER FOUR: An End to Suspicion 77
Women and Children First 78
The Consecration of the Event 84
The Last Witnesses 88
The Humanity of Criminals 93

PART TWO: The Politics of Reparation 99
CHAPTER FIVE: Psychiatric Victimology 107
Victims' Rights 108
The Resistance of Psychiatry 115
An Ambiguous Origin 119
A Relative Autonomy 124
CHAPTER SIX: Toulouse 128
The Summons to Trauma 130
Emergency Care in Question 135
Inequalities and Exclusions 140
Consolation and Compensation 148

PART THREE: The Politics of Testimony 155
CHAPTER SEVEN: Humanitarian Psychiatry 163
One Origin, Two Accounts 164
In the Beginning Was Humanitarianism 171
On the Margins of War 177
The Frontiers of Humanity 183
CHAPTER EIGHT: Palestine 189
The Need to Testify 192
The Chronicles of Suffering 197
The Equivalence of Victims 203
Histories without a History 209

PART FOUR: The Politics of Proof 217
CHAPTER NINE: The Psychotraumatology of Exile 225
The Immigrant, Between Native and Foreigner 226
The Clinical Practice of Asylum 231
A Change of Paradigm 236
The Evidence of the Body 242
CHAPTER TEN: Asylum 250
The Illegitimate Refugee 252
Recognizing the Sign 258
The Truth of Writing 264
The Meaning of Words 269

CONCLUSION: The Moral Economy of Trauma 275
Bibliography 285
Index of Names 299
Index of Subjects 303