Der Fall des Traumas: zur somatischen Dimension geschlechtlicher Subjektivierungen. Eine Schrift zur Einführung in die Soma Studies

Following the post-structuralist criticism on gender identity, gender is explored in its vulnerable aspects and vulnerability is explored in its possible gender constituting forces. This way the question of materialisation of gender norms is linked to knowledge production on trauma, violence and vulnerability. By setting life science knowledge production on corporeal traumatic memories under a critical review – challenging it with Judith Butler's position on identity constraint, the sociology of the body by Pierre Bourdieu, Gilles Deleuze's post-identitarian philosophy, a revisited philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner and incisively with Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of subjectivation as mnemotechnics – gender is unfolded as a somatic and insidious traumatic process – a technique of memory. This leads to a proposal of a new materialist framework, a materialist turn in social science to meet the questions of gender-related subjectivation. In this work a materialist turn is introduced as Nietzsche turn, because the reference to the multiple forces of life may hint to perspectives on recalcitrance and resistance to social hegemony as well as to experiences of dematerialisation of gender norms. This is endeavoured to be exemplified by discussing case documentation of the author's traumatherapeutical work from a critical point of view to the teleological claim of identity in psychic health discourses as well as throughout autoethnographic studies. The latter concerning the contemporary dance form Contact Improvisation. In both studies the processual microphysics of (de)materialisation of gender are pointed out. This work contributes in an unlike manner to the actual debates in social science on the subject and its materiality, on the relation of gender and the body, nature and culture, social order and sensations. By pinpointing to the body as agent matter as well as by discussing life science knowledge production on the body within a poststructuralist framework, a system of thought is introduced that the author denotes as Soma Studies. Soma Studies analyse the body in relation to social practices and power relations with reference to a critical reading of natural science as well as post-structuralist or post-deconstructivist epistemology.