(Ad)dressing Wounds: A Trauma in Seven Act(or)s

The following text constitutes the beginning of an incomplete poly-vocal script for an absent performance. Poetic and experimental in tone the script comprises a variety of different characters speaking from, through, to and about wounds. If we consider the wound in the context of its etymological root ‘trauma’, it is usually understood to be beyond symbolic representation. The wound is mute, silent, or as Cathy Caruth says, it embodies an ‘impossible saying’ (1995, p. 10), which again promotes, according to Shoshana Felman, a ‘disintegration of narrative’ (1992, p. 171). Hence the contribution circulates staggering around the hole or wound of the unsayable. The text establishes a kinship between addressing (language/speech), wound dressing (medicine) and dressing (fashion/costume design) and their respective relationships to the body (textual and physical) from the specific perspectives of the characters introduced. Questions such as how to write and approach the unspeakable or address/dress the negative space of wounds and how to (ad)dress a wounded/traumatised body in language or ‘write the body’—in reference to Hélène Cixous’ écriture féminine—are playfully interrogated. The history of wound care, medieval mysticism, trauma theory, psychoanalysis, narrative holes, and current and historical politics and economies of care are poly-vocally addressed. Caruth, C. ed., 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory, Maryland: John Hopkins University Press. Felman, S., & Laub, D. 1992. Testimony, New York and London: Routledge.