Trauma Time and Memory in Understanding Gender-Based Violence

Abstract

This article draws upon Jenny Edkins’ notion of ‘trauma time’ and asks how it helps us to better understand entanglement with past trauma in the context of gender-based violence (GBV). Edkins argues that enacting trauma time allows for multiple narratives and resistance, challenging the normalisation of traumas by sovereign power within linear time. I propose that trauma time offers valuable insights into better understanding GBV by highlighting the socio-political nature of trauma and critiquing the linear narrative of healing and restoring social order. Through an analysis of debates over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill in the United Kingdom, this article unpacks how social actors enact trauma time surrounding various forms of GBV, especially gendered violence against trans people. I argue that while sharing some similarities with gender critical feminists’ invocation of trauma time, the enactment of trauma time by trans rights activists troubles and challenges the reproduction of the linear narratives that hide multiple sites of violence. Going beyond examining individual temporal experiences of trauma, this article interrogates how different ways of enacting trauma time, originating from systemic sources of GBV, reveal non-linear and multiple temporalities. It also contributes to a deeper understanding of societal contestations over negotiating and challenging temporal order.