Acting Out: Trauma and the Ethics of Remembrance (Special Issue)

The etymology of 'trauma' is of course from the Greek word meaning 'wound' and it is this, perhaps, which reveals the real and the imaginary dimension of the traumatic. For while a wound may be encountered physically, the wound of trauma is also - as Cathy Caruth explains - a 'wound of the mind.' Certainly, it seems that it is the tension between the real and the imagined, the body and the mind, the factual and the remembered, which has inspired so many of the performance practices that have been explored in the different contributions in this special edition. As editors we have very much enjoyed the diversity of material and the tantalizing moments of synergies and intersections that have emerged. We would like to thank the contributors for their hard work and the editorial board of Performing Ethos for allowing us to work with the authors to produce this special issue.