In this special chat episode, Medaya Ocher, Eric Newman, and Kate Wolf use Catherine Liu's new book Traumatized to dive into the political uses and pitfalls of trauma. Liu argues that the elite professional class has fully absorbed the trauma narrative; the story of an individual's suffering and recovery courses through the culture on social and mass media not as a tool for liberation, but as a means of keeping the status quo. In turning our gaze away from class struggle, the discourse of trauma on the mainstream left has largely remained deaf to questions of economic equality. Medaya, Eric, and Kate walk through Liu's argument, debating everything from the sins of Betty Frieidan and Oprah Winfrey to true crime and celebrity documentaries. Have we all become too traumatized to effectively resist in the present?
