City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 6-2014 (Remember) The Future: The Preemptive Governance of Memory in the Age of Mass Catastrophe Kimberly J. Cunningham Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/193 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] (REMEMBER) THE FUTURE: THE PREEMPTIVE GOVERNANCE OF MEMORY IN THE AGE OF MASS CATASTROPHE by KIM CUNNINGHAM A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Sociology in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York. 2014 ©2014 KIM CUNNINGHAM All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Sociology in satisfaction of the dissertation requirements for the Degree of Philosophy. Professor Patricia Ticineto Clough _________________________ _________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Professor Philip Kasinitz _________________________ _________________________________ Date Executive Officer Victoria Pitts-Taylor Jackie Orr Michelle Fine Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract (REMEMBER) THE FUTURE: THE PREEMPTIVE GOVERNANCE OF MEMORY IN THE AGE OF MASS CATASTROPHE by Kim Cunningham Advisor: Patricia Ticineto Clough This study is a critical engagement with the preemptive turn in post-biopolitical governance in psychotherapies to treat traumatic memory and its related clinical diagnosis, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in the wake of the mass disasters of the 21st century. Emerging in the post-911 era of increased anticipatory action in the governance of populations and also, increasingly ubiquitous and large scale threat such as global recession, climate change, and terrorism/war, traumatic memory of these events is framed increasingly as a population-level contagion to be addressed by anticipatory action. A study of trends in emerging and favored psychotherapies for trauma post-911 reveals that traumatic memory becomes understood and controlled as a population-level, contagious psycho-medical threat. New psychotherapies such as EMDR and virtual reality therapy, utilizing new simulation methods that engage the body’s sensory memory, are being utilized with the aim of conditioning the body’s responses before traumatic symptoms can form in the brain’s “neuro networks.” This study examines how these temporal logics are consistent with the logics of preemptive war, and enact and transmit, through the act of preparation and preemption, the very panic and trauma they claim to be preventing. iv Acknowledgements On my birthday March 27th, 2008, I received a present in the mail. It was Ruth Leys' Trauma: A Genealogy. I called my father to thank him for the gift, and then said goodbye, and hung up the phone. As if the book's title was an omen, he died just three days later in a tragic and mysterious skiing accident. At the time I received the book, I was completely lost about what to topic to write about for my dissertation. But my father gave me my dissertation topic---through the book, in his death itself, and through the memory of his love and our years of deep conversation. I have him first and foremost to thank. All of this is for you and through him. It is him. And I dedicate this work to him. The years that I spent writing this volume were the hardest years of my life, as loss and mourning, poverty, economic recession, the neoliberal erosion of the university system, confusion, and precariousness entered my life in a new degree to which I was entirely unprepared. This volume is an account of those years, a valorization of them, rather than an act of heroism over them. Suffering is the best teacher, and to learn from it, I believe you must feel it all, without shortcuts, without stopping, without any magic, without a plan or preparation. I bow to those years and the lessons they taught me, which can never be spoken in words. I bow with deep thanks and gratitude to the suffering they encompass, the beauty of which continues to unfold within me as time unfurls feeling. v Growing up queer is never easy, but I was positively blessed that my parents were a moral and emotional shelter for me. My mother is the most generous human being I have ever met in my life. I want to say thank you to her for everything in this world. I want to thank my advisor, Patricia Clough, for the vast space of creative expression she offered me in writing and thinking. I will never forget the day when I asked her “how will I have time to work on my dissertation when I have so much mourning to do?” She wisely responded, "The mourning is the work." And she was right. It is the work, and this volume is that work. I thank her so much for her brilliance at every level of thinking through this project and inspiring me to the highest level of theoretical sophistication. Thank you to Victoria Pitts-Taylor who had faith in me from the first moment we met, and made me both a professor and theorist with our sustaining intellectual exchanges over the years, her generosity, and her unconditional confidence in me. Thank you to Jackie Orr who with such delight and care devoured my words, understood the project and dreamed it with me. This work would not have been possible without her zest and generosity, her brilliance and careful artistry, her inventive scholarly imagination. I want to thank another mentor, Catherine Silver, for her amazing guidance and her total brilliance in teaching me psychoanalytic theory. She was the first one who taught me that when I was lost, I could trust in the process of experimental writing, and that my unconscious would speak to me if I could have the trust to just listen, just witness it without ambition. I also thank Grace Cho for her bravery in writing experimentally, which inspired this study. Carrie Rohman’s enthusiasm for my work and mentorship have been sustaining and inspiring. vi I want to thank my all of my friends at the Graduate Center, especially Alyson Spurgas, Zoe Meleo-Erwin, Kate Jenkins, Mike Jolley, John Andrews, Sandra Trappen, Ilgin Yorukoglu, Cathy Borck, Elizabeth Wilson, Colleen Eren, Simone Kolysh, Ben Haber, Josh Scannell, Aaron Weeks, Marissa Brostoff, Kara van Cleaf, Karen Gregory, and many others. Outside of the GC I thank my vast friend-family, especially: Bridget and Erin Hesse, Shawn McCabe, Lauren White, Lucy Collins, and Jenni Griffith. You are amazing and I love you. I want to thank the BioCultures Writing Group, especially Stina Soderling, Alison Cool, and Miriam Greenberg. Thank you Lisa Haynes. How could I have made it through this past year without you? Your unconditional support has been amazing. Teaching provided the creative outlet and emotional sustenance in my daily life to complete this project. I thank Yuni Kawamura at FIT, Penny Lewis at BMCC, and Janet Michello and Karen Miller at LCC. And most of all my colleagues at Montclair State University, especially Jay Livingston, Gil Zicklin, Yong Wang, Janet Ruane, and Sangeeta Parashar. I thank all of my thousands of students for sustaining me with their kind attention and admiration, their true caring for the world and ethical concern always. I love dreaming with you. Finally, I would like to thank those objects at the nonhuman level---waves, the air, time---for their unconditional witnessing of my being. May my actions sustain you always as you sustain me. vii Table of Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgements v Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Future: Affect and Memory in Prognosis Time 9 Chapter 2: NeuroGovernance: The Preemptive Turn in EMDR Psychotherapy 37 Chapter 3: On What Never Happened, a Memoir 62 Chapter 4: Mnemonic Violence: The Preemptive War (on Trauma) 93 Chapter 5: The Triggered Body: A Connective, PostHuman Ontology 133 Bibliography 140 viii Introduction: FutureLoss Something was happening to time. Or it is happening to time. Or it will be happening to time. The world ended, apocalypse over and over again. And I'm not sure I can count how many times. If I try, I will leave some out. Some still cannot be mentioned. Some are still happening, nearly continuous with a background of normalcy like some kind of "slow death" (Berlant, 2008). The Future hits close to home. The apocalyptic future hit me on March 30, 2008. My father had died suddenly in a skiing accident when he hit a tree on the last day the ski resort was open, on the last run of the day. Alone on the hill, there was no explanation for why he was going so fast. And there would be no explanation for fast, slow, or time itself ever again. Stop. Don't stop. Can't stop. LEXAPRO. KLONOPIN. FOR MAJOR DEPRESSIVE DISORDER. (MDD). THIS MEDICATION MAY CAUSE IMPAIRMENT OF MOTOR ACTIVITY. SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH MAY OCCUR. It was hard to know what started it or where it ended. Maybe the apocalypse happened eight months before, when my father was diagnosed with severe depression. Eight months of no sleep. Stop. Don't stop. Can’t stop. Severe depression. Forced to retire. Lost his students, his voice when they removed the most beloved professor from his Physiology class when he could no longer continue to teach, mumbling to himself. "Neoliberal erosion of the university," was the catchphrase. 1 And I guess the rest is a much harder story to tell.