When I think about his­tor­i­cal trauma, I think about trans­mis­sion of affect. I just fin­ished this book for another class that cen­tered on the role of emo­tion and affect in rad­i­cal orga­niz­ing dur­ing the begin­ning of the AIDS epi­demic. The author, draw­ing from Mas­sumi and a bunch of other affect stud­ies the­o­rist, explains affect as a non-conscious somatic response to out­side forces that exists before and dur­ing its artic­u­la­tion (to ones self or to oth­ers) as emo­tion. So as an inter­per­sonal exam­ple, feel­ing someone’s vibe or feel­ing the ten­sion in a room is affect. When affect is artic­u­lated, there is always an excess of it that resists artic­u­la­tion or even con­scious under­stand­ing. Affect is messy, multi-directional, and inter­per­sonal. How this relates to his­tor­i­cal trauma is per­haps in its trans­mis­sion. The suf­fer­ing of oth­ers, one’s loved ones, one’s fam­ily, one’s com­mu­nity, the land itself, has weight of its own that resists artic­u­la­tion but is deeply felt.

In many ways, we expe­ri­ence the world as the sto­ries that we tell about it, about our­selves, and about oth­ers. Nar­ra­tiv­ity of the self is a cru­cial part of many forms of psy­chother­apy. One can imag­ine absorb­ing the impacts of his­tor­i­cal trauma through the sto­ries told by fam­ily and com­mu­nity mem­bers or through the sto­ries the dom­i­nant cul­ture tells about those it leaves in its wake. Part of these sto­ries or of the trans­mis­sion of these sto­ries is the affec­tual response that accom­pa­nies them but can­not be made part of the sto­ries, that belongs to the body. Bod­ies them­selves tell sto­ries that escape artic­u­la­tion not just in that they absorb the impacts of envi­ron­men­tal dam­age but in that they con­tain the excess of affect that trans­mits trauma.