From Mad in Mexico: Trauma studies are a field of political dispute, where not only the ability to define what hurts and what doesn’t is at stake, but also how we understand the determinants that generate that pain, and whether it is even relevant to conceptualize and transform these factors. The depoliticization of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) served specific objectives and allowed nations that export their wars to avoid addressing political questions about the generation of this suffering: the focus was on diagnosis and treatment. In Latin America, where violence was experienced within the territory, these questions were unavoidable, and this gave way to a more complex view of suffering where the important thing was not the diagnosis but the social reconstruction after the ruptures generated by war, and therefore, the question of the conditions that led to the materialization of suffering.
Read the full article here and the English translation here.
