CHAPTER 5
 SURVIVING TRAUMA AND THE POLITICS OF MOURNING



 [Writing about invisibility and haunting] requires
 attention to what is not seen, but is nonetheless powerfully
 real; requires attention to what appears dead, but is
 nonetheless powerfully alive; requires attention to what
 appears to be in the past, but is nonetheless powerfully
 present; requires attention to just who the subject of
 analysis is.
 Avery F. Gordon


 Traumatic Haunting, Interpretation, and the Politics of Mourning

 The story of trauma is the story of the haunting of the unacknowledged and

irreparable loss and grief. What Avery F. Gordon argues about writing about haunting

also applies to the story of trauma, for underlying both is "what appears dead, but is

nonetheless powerfully alive" or "what appears to be in the past, but is nonetheless

powerfully present."1 In both haunting and trauma, not only is the past inextricably

entwined with the present but it also repeatedly intrudes upon the present with persistent

force, stopping the progression of time and locking people into the perpetual reliving of

the earlier moments of terror and agony. An invisible kernel of trauma lives on without

letting up its grip on those who are compelled to endure their pain silently.

 Trauma, whether personal or social, is, at its core, about the disenfranchised pain

that cannot be integrated into the general meaning structure and the belief system that

support our lives. Jonathan Shay, who treated Vietnam veterans and studied combat

trauma, observes that veterans' war-time experiences of "betrayal of what's right," as