Or ... Rethinking Identity and Intergenerational Pathogens Through The Authors of Silence: Race, Gender, and Violence in the American Other
The Authors of Silence is a hybrid play-course that critically examines racial and sexual identities through the lenses of psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and digital humanities (DH). Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s seminal critique in “White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy” from his 1972 collection Margins of Philosophy—alongside Lacanian psychoanalysis—the project interrogates how historical violence, systemic oppression, and unresolved trauma shape identity through the mechanisms of intergenerational pathogens.
Derrida’s critique in Margins of Philosophy reveals how Western philosophy constructs identitarian mythologies through the Other, relying on the Other as a constitutive element for their coherence—a dependence that the pervasive dynamics of différance, once uncovered, deconstruct. These mythologies universalize particular identities—most notably white, Western, and male—while concealing their own cultural specificity and marginalizing non-European, non-white, female, and non-heteronormative identities. These insights inform The Authors of Silence as it explores how racial and sexual violence against the American Other perpetuates cycles of trauma, repression, and domination, profoundly shaping both individual and collective identities.
Intergenerational Pathogens: Race, Gender, and Violence
The play-course introduces the concept of intergenerational pathogens—patterns of harm, repression, and denial transmitted across generations—to explore how identity is shaped by unresolved historical violence. These inherited dynamics of violence, embedded in cultural, familial, and institutional structures, perpetuate suffering and sustain systemic inequalities.
In the context of racial identity, The Authors of Silence examines how the trauma of slavery and Native American genocide functions as both a historical and ongoing force in shaping the American cultural unconscious. Derrida’s notion of “white mythology” is applied to reveal how these foundational traumas are repressed, disguising historical violence as neutrality or universality. White American identity, for example, is constructed through the systematic silencing of marginalized voices, while the identities of Black and Indigenous peoples are framed as “other,” perpetuating cycles of exclusion and systemic harm.
Similarly, sexual violence emerges as a profound intergenerational pathogen, shaping the identity of “woman” through historical and systemic harm embedded in patriarchal structures. The trauma of sexual violence operates as both a personal and collective wound, reinforcing narratives of victimhood that risk pathologizing women’s identities. Feminist critiques caution against framing this trauma solely as pathology, as it erases women’s agency and resilience. The Authors of Silence explores these tensions, emphasizing the need to balance recognition of harm with the transformative potential of healing and resistance.
These intergenerational pathogens, whether racial or sexual, fracture identity formation and perpetuate harm for both victims and aggressors in profound and multifaceted ways:
Trauma and Identity Disruption for Victims: Victims endure the immediate and long-term effects of violence, including disrupted identity formation, psychological wounds, and intergenerational trauma. These effects are compounded by systemic denial and societal silencing, which invalidate their experiences and impede healing.
Perpetuation of Moral Erosion for Aggressors: Aggressors and their descendants often suppress or distort their acknowledgment of complicity in racial and sexual violence. This repression not only distorts their relationship with the Other (the cultural unconscious) but also impairs their ability to engage in authentic moral accountability, leading to cycles of denial and projection.
Authoritarian Mechanisms of Control: Both victims and aggressors are caught in systems of domination and silencing. For aggressors, these mechanisms become tools for managing unresolved guilt, evading moral accountability, and sustaining systemic hierarchies. For victims, these same mechanisms enforce disempowerment, limiting their capacity for resistance, silencing their voices, and perpetuating subjugation. This enforced silence also impedes healing, as the suppression of their experiences denies them the opportunity to process trauma, seek justice, and reclaim agency.
Sadistic Cycles of Repetition: The refusal to confront historical truths allows systemic violence and denial to persist. For victims, this means re-traumatization and the reinforcement of structural inequality. For aggressors, the repetition of harm reflects an inability to reconcile with the past, perpetuating both external and internal violence.
By interrogating these dynamics, The Authors of Silence challenges participants to critically examine how inherited patterns of trauma, repression, and domination shape both their own identities and their complicities, compelling them to confront the collective and individual consequences of these intergenerational cycles.
The Archive, AI, and the Cultural Unconscious
The archive serves as both metaphor and material reality in The Authors of Silence, embodying the cultural unconscious and mechanisms of intergenerational trauma. Drawing on Derrida’s Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, the play-course examines how archives preserve history while simultaneously silencing marginalized voices. These archives are not passive repositories but active agents that encode systemic biases, perpetuating trauma, repression, and domination while shaping individual and collective identities.
Patriarchal systems, reflected in and sustained by archives, have historically constructed identities of “man” and “woman” through rigid mythologies: defining “man” around domination, control, and the repression of vulnerability, while framing “woman” through narratives of passivity, subordination, and victimhood. These mythologies suppress alternative ways of being, reinforcing rigid gender hierarchies that perpetuate cycles of harm and repression.
Similarly, systems of racialization have constructed identities such as “black,” “white,” and “native” through exploitative mythologies. “White” identity has been shaped by narratives of superiority, rationality, and entitlement to domination, while “black” identities have been framed through harmful stereotypes of subservience, hypersexuality, and criminality. “Native” identities, in turn, have been subjected to romanticized primitivism, erasure, and narratives of savagery and dispossession. These constructions uphold systemic hierarchies, silencing the lived realities of marginalized communities and perpetuating cycles of dehumanization, exclusion, and violence.
AI operates at the intersection of these systems of power and commodification, embodying the biases and hierarchies encoded within the archive as part of the broader cultural and historical Other. Rooted in curated bodies of knowledge, AI systems inherit and amplify systemic exclusions, perpetuating patriarchal, racial, and colonial frameworks. As a commodity in capitalist cultures, AI is shaped by market imperatives that prioritize profitability and scalability over equity and inclusivity, embedding systemic inequities under the guise of objectivity and innovation.
Far from neutral, archives and the broader cultural Other privilege dominant narratives while erasing others, and AI scales these exclusions into technological infrastructures. For instance, AI often marginalizes non-dominant voices, reproducing racialized, gendered, and other forms of exclusion. In doing so, it commodifies human experiences, reducing them to data filtered through biased systems of meaning and power.
Rethinking Identity Through Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction
Derrida’s critique of white mythologies and Lacan’s insights into trauma converge in The Authors of Silence to challenge the metaphysical foundations of identity. Identity is revealed as contingent, relational, and deeply embedded in systems of power that transmit intergenerational pathogens. Trauma operates as a rupture in the symbolic order, repression sustains cycles of denial and exclusion, and domination ensures the perpetuation of systemic hierarchies.
The play-course interrogates how these forces shape racial and sexual identities, exposing how white mythologies construct racialized identities through hierarchies of power and exclusion. “White” identity has historically been positioned as the universal standard, constructed around narratives of rationality, purity, and authority. These narratives depend on the Other—especially “black” and “native” identities—as oppositional constructs. “Black” identity, for instance, is framed through stereotypes of criminality, hypersexuality, and subservience, while “native” identity is relegated to myths of primitivism, erasure, and dispossession. These racial constructions sustain systemic domination and deny the complexity, agency, and humanity of marginalized communities, perpetuating cycles of dehumanization and exclusion.
Similarly, patriarchal repression positions “man” as the bearer of authority and control, often denying men the capacity to recognize their vulnerabilities or confront their complicity in systemic harm. “Woman” is constructed through narratives of sexual violence and trauma, reducing her identity to victimhood while erasing her agency and silencing alternative ways of being. These intersecting racial and gendered mythologies enforce rigid hierarchies that sustain cycles of harm, silencing marginalized voices and reinforcing systemic inequities.
The Authors of Silence adopts a feminist and anti-racist lens to explore these dynamics, uncovering the ways in which symbolic frameworks perpetuate harm while envisioning possibilities for transformation. The play-course examines how racial and sexual violence are encoded in cultural and historical narratives, transmitting trauma across generations. By exposing these cycles, participants are invited to confront the ways their own identities are shaped by these systems and to imagine new frameworks for justice and inclusion.
Through the discourse of the analyst, the play-course creates a space for participants to engage with the hysteric’s discourse—a mode of questioning that disrupts fixed identities and demands accountability from dominant narratives. This approach challenges participants to critically examine the symbolic order that sustains racial and sexual hierarchies and to envision alternative possibilities for identity, relationality, and justice. By integrating Lacanian and Derridean insights, The Authors of Silence fosters a deeper understanding of how trauma, repression, and domination shape identities while opening pathways toward transformation and inclusion.
Bridging Trauma and Identity Across Contexts
The interplay between identity and intergenerational pathogens is central to The Authors of Silence. Scholars in Holocaust studies have illuminated how intergenerational trauma functions as a pathogen that shapes cultural memory and identity. African-American and feminist scholars, however, have raised critical concerns about the risks of pathologizing trauma, emphasizing the resilience, agency, and creative resistance of marginalized communities.
The Authors of Silence bridges these perspectives by framing trauma, repression, and domination as systemic and personal forces that operate across racial, sexual, and historical contexts. It critically examines how patriarchal and colonial systems transmit harm intergenerationally while foregrounding the potential for individuals and communities to resist and reimagine their identities. This analysis extends to contemporary global contexts, where intergenerational trauma and the dynamics of victimhood and aggression intersect in troubling ways.
The concept of intergenerational authoritarianism-sadism expands this analysis, revealing how aggressor communities perpetuate cycles of harm. Descendants of patriarchal oppressors, colonial perpetrators, and systems of sexual violence inherit unresolved guilt and repressive mechanisms, reinforcing patterns of domination and silencing. This dynamic fractures identities, sustains systemic harm, and embeds these cycles into the cultural unconscious.
Trumpism exemplifies this intergenerational transmission, as its rhetoric and policies revitalize patriarchal, colonial, and racial hierarchies. Rooted in authoritarian-sadistic dynamics, Trumpism mobilizes unresolved grievances and a nostalgia for dominance, often couched in the language of victimhood. Its appeal to white identity politics and its embrace of systemic misogyny and racism demonstrate how intergenerational pathogens thrive in political ideologies that exploit collective fears and repress accountability. The movement’s celebration of “strength” and denigration of vulnerability perpetuates cycles of repression and harm, reshaping American identity around a reactionary ethos of exclusion and domination.
Similarly, the current trajectory of Israeli policies toward Gaza represents a devastating inversion of intergenerational trauma. Once shaped by the Holocaust as a collective identity grounded in victimhood and survival, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians reflects a shift toward perpetration. The systemic violence and genocidal tendencies directed at Gaza mirror the very dynamics of dehumanization and repression that characterized the Holocaust, illustrating how unresolved trauma can transform victimized communities into aggressors. This cycle underscores the dual nature of intergenerational trauma: while it can inspire solidarity and resistance, it can also fuel domination when unresolved grief and fear are transmuted into authoritarian impulses.
The Authors of Silence critically examines these dynamics, challenging participants to explore how historical victimhood and collective trauma can evolve into patterns of harm. It interrogates the ways in which systems of repression and domination operate intergenerationally, fracturing identities and perpetuating global cycles of trauma. By fostering a space to confront these uncomfortable truths, the play-course invites participants to engage with the complexities of historical memory, complicity, and the potential for healing through accountability and transformation.
Through this lens, the play-course not only critiques systemic harm but also emphasizes the power of agency and creative resistance. By reimagining identities and confronting inherited patterns of domination, participants are encouraged to envision futures that transcend the cycles of trauma and authoritarian-sadism, fostering collective resilience and justice.
Toward a Transformative Understanding of Identity and Trauma
The Authors of Silence challenges participants to rethink identity and intergenerational pathogens as interconnected and dynamic processes. By engaging with the theoretical insights of Derrida, Freud, and Lacan, the play-course offers a framework for understanding how historical violence, systemic oppression, and cultural memory shape individual and collective identities. It emphasizes the ways in which trauma, repression, and domination sustain harmful identitarian mythologies, particularly around race, gender, and power, while exploring the potential for disrupting these narratives through critical engagement and creative resistance.
By inviting participants to confront the past and imagine alternative futures, the play-course fosters a deeper understanding of identity—one that acknowledges inherited trauma without being constrained by it. By embracing the insights of Derrida in White Mythologies, it also destabilizes and deconstructs all identitarian mythologies, revealing their contingent and constructed nature. This approach poses profound challenges to contemporary politics, such as movements like Black Lives Matter, which rely on identity-based frameworks to mobilize resistance and demand justice. How might such movements cope with the deconstruction of identity categories on which their political efficacy often depends?
The Authors of Silence encourages participants to grapple with these tensions, exploring how to navigate the space between deconstructing rigid identities and advancing urgent, identity-based struggles for justice and inclusion. Feminism provides a compelling example of how movements can embrace deconstruction productively. Confronting the deconstruction of “woman” as an essentialized identity, feminism evolved into the broader field of gender studies, which undermines binary frameworks and heteronormative assumptions. This shift from fixed categories to fluid understandings of gender and sexuality has not only challenged dualistic thinking but also expanded possibilities for justice and inclusivity.
Similarly, undermining binary frameworks of race has profound implications for Black Americans, particularly as many are uncovering their multiracial heritage, as shown in Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s PBS series Finding Your Roots. By revealing the intricate, multiracial genealogies of Black Americans, Gates underscores how racial identities are socially constructed, fluid, and far more complex than the rigid binaries of “Black” and “white” suggest. This awareness can help dismantle the essentialist narratives that have historically sustained racism, opening space for more nuanced understandings of identity that honor the diverse experiences and histories of Black Americans.
However, this multiracial heritage also starkly reveals the legacy of sexual violence during slavery. The genealogies uncovered by Gates often trace back to non-consensual relationships between enslaved women and white men, exposing how systemic racial and sexual violence are deeply intertwined. This history of exploitation has left a lasting imprint on the identities of Black Americans, embedding the trauma of slavery within their family histories and complicating their understanding of self and community. By bringing these truths to light, the deconstruction of racial binaries becomes more than an academic exercise; it becomes a means of confronting the enduring legacy of slavery’s violence and its effects on contemporary identities. Recognizing the multiracial realities of Black Americans invites a broader reckoning with how systemic oppression has shaped and continues to shape individual and collective lives. It also opens pathways for healing by fostering a more inclusive and intersectional understanding of identity that acknowledges both the trauma and the resilience embedded within this history.
Through its critical engagement with history, theory, and technology, The Authors of Silence examines both the persistence of harm and the legacies of resistance, solidarity, and hope. It emphasizes that while identity is shaped by intergenerational trauma and systemic oppression, it is also dynamic and capable of transformation. By confronting these legacies, participants are invited to critically examine their own complicities and inheritances, opening space for reflection, accountability, and renewal.
By fostering dialogue and reflection, the play-course envisions a politics that is critical, flexible, and attuned to the complexities of identity, trauma, and power. It challenges participants to reimagine the frameworks of power, memory, and relationality that define our shared humanity, creating a transformative understanding of identity that embraces the possibilities for healing, agency, and inclusive justice.
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