The Folding of Trauma

This article examines the government of trauma by examining the rebuilding of Ground Zero as a practice of folding the traumatic event, of capturing the traumatic event by containing it within the forms of what can be said and what can be seen. Something always goes missing in this process: the ungraspable and inexpressible dimension of trauma, which ultimately resists capture. On this basis, it considers different architectural designs and proposals as expressions of different strategies of folding the traumatic event. One strategy seeks to capture and contain the traumatic event through the production of specific forms of seeing and speaking in the social field. A second strategy points to our inability to capture the traumatic event through folding. The conclusion considers how these two strategies can be used to analyze the political significance of architecture in the discourses of the war on terror.