An embodied semiotics of trauma: documenting the ‘inexpressible’ in a forensic mental health facility 

Yvonne Langkamer, UCL Institute of Education

Using the theoretical framework of biosemiotics, which is built on the concept of the organism as sign system, my interdisciplinary work examines how the ‘inexpressible’ or, indeed, ‘unexpressible’ experience of trauma is imprinted in the body. Combined processes of the body and of body memory (Merleau-Ponty), therefore, are a means by which trauma – in the form of psychological, or psychic, pain – is represented and interpreted semiotically. ‘Deactivation’ of executive functioning in the brain during traumatising events results in trauma being remembered “not as a story – a narrative with a beginning, middle and end – but as isolated sensory imprints: images, sounds, and physical sensations that are accompanied by intense emotions, usually terror and helplessness” (van der Kolk, 2014). Consequently, it is suggested this may render many so-called talking therapies inadequate for the treatment of traumatized individuals, their being simply unable to narrativize their experience. For this seminar, I hope also to explore the idea of the epigenetic transmission of trauma. Epigenetic changes (unlike genetic changes) do not alter the DNA sequence but modify how the gene is expressed or read: how it is switched on or off. As an example, a parent’s exposure to environmental experiences, such as starvation or air pollution, may subsequently be manifested as metabolic disease or respiratory illness in their offspring. Following Frost (2020), I wish to examine the notion that epigenetic transformations can be deemed to be indexical – as meaning-making processes: “biochemical traces of a body’s response to a particular experience…that are linked materially and causally to a body’s experience and history”, the experience and history here being not necessarily that of the individual but of his or her antecedent(s). (Bio)semiotics is a bridge-building endeavour, allowing us to view the body not as passive but as agentive, as reacting to its environment (and to other bodies intercorporeally), enabling a critique and reimagining of dualistic thinking: mind/body, (psyche/soma), collective/individual, subject/object, matter/meaning