Gail Adams-Hutcheson

By pushing at theoretical boundaries this paper addresses emotion and affect as a means to link together trauma’s spatial, physical, subconscious and psychosocial dimensions. Its aim is to extend theoretical discussion on spatially located affectual moments of trauma by utilising the concept of skin. Skin is used here as a metaphorical and theoretical framework for examining ideas of boundaries and containment. A container is a deceptively simple idea but requires constant boundary maintenance. Trauma, however, often threatens to spill over the boundaries of emotional containers exposing the fragility of boundaries both theoretical and material. Close attention is paid to the psychoanalytic idea of skin, borders and boundaries to extrapolate how trauma draws in ideas of surfaces and abjection. In some ways abjection exposes the fragility of borders, how they can be threatened from both without and within. When working across the skin, an examination of what bodies do in both the post-disaster environment (Christchurch) and in relocated spaces (Waikato) is undertaken to illuminate the theoretical premises of this work. People move toward others in order to share their experiences, thus, trauma is encountered as a social and spatial project.