
Traumatized
The New Politics of Public Suffering
Catherine Liu(Author)
Verso Books (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 29. September 2026
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-1-80429-674-5 (ISBN)
Description
In Traumatized, Liu exposes how an idea born from genuine suffering has been weaponized into a tool of social control. This is the story of how shell-shock became PTSD, how Oprah turned pain into profit, and how "authenticity" became the ultimate brand. It's a history of surveillance capitalism's greatest coup: convincing us that our wounds define us, that vulnerability is strength, and that we must endlessly accommodate each other's trauma while the powerful remain untouched.
Liu delivers an unflinching diagnosis of our current crisis-the collapse of liberal politics, the rise of performance fragility, and a culture that mistakes emotional display for political action. Sharp, provocative, and urgently necessary, Liu argues what we can do to combat a politics of permanent victimhood that individualizes suffering, destroys solidarity, and leaves us defenseless against the very systems that harm us.
Liu delivers an unflinching diagnosis of our current crisis-the collapse of liberal politics, the rise of performance fragility, and a culture that mistakes emotional display for political action. Sharp, provocative, and urgently necessary, Liu argues what we can do to combat a politics of permanent victimhood that individualizes suffering, destroys solidarity, and leaves us defenseless against the very systems that harm us.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 210 mm
Width: 140 mm
Weight
567 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-80429-674-5 (9781804296745)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Catherine Liu is professor in the Departments of Film and Media Studies/Visual Studies, Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine, where she also served as director of the UCI Humanities Center. She is the author of Copying Machines: Taking Notes for the Automaton, The American Idyll: Academic Anti-Elitism as Cultural Critique and Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class.