Book review 'The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood by Didier Fassin & Richard Rechtman

Abstract

Fassin and Rechtman’s aims are not to explore individual experiences of victimhood or trauma. Instead their concern is with the social and political impact of the concept of ‘trauma’ as an increasingly used resource for making sense of a wide range of suffering. Addressing a multi-disciplinary audience, and initially taking a historical perspective, they explore ‘how we have moved from a realm in which the symptoms of the wounded solder or the injured worker were deemed of doubtful legitimacy to one in which their suffering, no longer contested, testifies to an experience that excites sympathy and merits compensation