The concept of psychological trauma has been taken up widely in popular culture and in diverse academic fields including social work. In this work of poststructuralist discourse analysis, we used methods of close reading to examine a random sample of thirty social work articles on trauma (published 2010–2020). Our aim was not to refute the salience of the concept nor to establish its true meaning and correct usage, but to critically examine its discursive functions; what does ‘trauma’ do in social work? In our analysis, the progressive aims of the discourses of trauma—to counter pathologisation and confer legitimacy to harms that have been marginalised—are unrealised. ‘Trauma’ is deployed in multiple, often contradictory ways and the slippages between intent and function work to construct the trauma-laden as non-normative, damaged subjects, and legitimate objects, thus, of social work scrutiny and intervention. Social work’s discourses of trauma undermine their own efforts to centre a structural analysis. If ‘to perceive the world as a safe place’ is a signifier of normative, non-traumatised functioning, then what does ‘trauma’ do when applied to the racialised, gendered, colonised and marginalised, for whom the world is not a place of safety but of material and psychical violence?

中文翻译：

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创伤作为“世界是一个危险之地的信念”：社会工作的创伤话语中系统性暴力的混淆

心理创伤的概念已在流行文化和包括社会工作在内的不同学术领域得到广泛接受。在这项后结构主义话语分析工作中，我们使用精读方法随机抽取了 30 篇关于创伤的社会工作文章（2010-2020 年发表）作为样本。我们的目的不是反驳这个概念的显着性，也不是确定其真正含义和正确用法，而是批判性地审视其话语功能；“创伤”在社会工作中起什么作用？在我们的分析中，创伤话语的进步目标——对抗病态化并赋予被边缘化的伤害合法性——尚未实现。“创伤”以多种、常常相互矛盾的方式展开，意图和功能之间的脱节将充满创伤的人构建为非规范的、受损的主体和合法的客体，从而构成社会工作的审查和干预。社会工作对创伤的论述破坏了他们自己以结构分析为中心的努力。如果“将世界视为一个安全的地方”是规范的、非创伤性功能的象征，那么当“创伤”应用于种族化、性别化、殖民化和边缘化的人时，会产生什么作用，对他们来说，世界不是一个地方安全但物质和精神暴力？