Trauma Resignified

Abstract

This article problematises Catherine Malabou’s critique of psychoanalysis by arguing that it insufficiently accounts for the concept of Nachträglichkeit, or the dimension of temporality as it appears in the psychoanalytic theory of trauma. Nachträglichkeit shows, contra Malabou, the impossibility of localising trauma within a single moment or event. This argument is made by first reconstructing Malabou’s critique of psychoanalysis in The New Wounded, followed by an examination of Laplanche's conceptualisation of Nachträglichkeit through his various readings of the Emma Eckstein case and his seminar on the subject. From this, I can demonstrate how Malabou does not account for this notion and what the consequences are for her critique.