CATALEPTIC CONSCIOUSNESS. LANGUAGE AS A FIGURE OF SILENCE

Abstract

Under the trauma one could understand a single event that really happened and which fundamentally changed society, changed people's view of themselves and greatly changed the potential future for these people; or the trauma can be understood as some process that started to unfold after a catastrophic event and is still ongoing. Based on the fact that there are different possibilities to look at trauma, we can understand it as a certain situation of  deprivation, when people realize that they have lost something and are trying to find or repair it; or trauma can be understood as a story, when we realize that something happened and try to talk about it in different ways in different genres, using the same or very similar images; or under the trauma you can understand what is called unifying event, something that creates us. We all, regardless of the national specifics of the history, exist in postcatastrophic time and bear the burden of responsibility for the past. Deep experience of catastrophic events prepares the transition to a cataleptic consciousness, practicing forgetting and forming a particular subject – a post-traumatic subject. This post-traumatic subject, the subject of time-after is crucified between the ever-lasting pain (what never ceases to create the pain – remains in the memory) and the power of oblivion as a defense mechanism.