Public trauma and Personal trauma

banality

/bəˈnalɪti/

noun

1. the fact or condition of being banal; unoriginality.
2. 
   

In recent weeks I have returned to reading a book I started in the summer, Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem. The subtitle of the book, The Banality of Evil has been used often in other works and in conversations surrounding ethics. While Eichmann is by all accounts not a good person, he sees himself as a traumatised person who needs to be let of the hook due to his personal trauma. His trauma trumps the public trauma of all the (specifically) Jews he made to leave their home countries. Arendt states that Eichmann tends to brag about everything he has achieved and often relates it back to the lack of achievement he felt when he was younger. The main defence Eichmann used in his court case was that he was simply following orders. He was simply finally doing the thing that he search so long for, something he was good at. The idea of the 'banal' with Arendt's work is seen as someone who isn't simply evil, but someone who unquestioningly follows orders. 

The question that I ask regarding this is 'Can trauma be banal?' As certain trauma's become more common, the concept of banality could be applied to the experience of trauma both within the world and as an individual. The trauma experienced in and around terror attacks has, to a certain extent, become relatively common. However, is it common enough to be considered banal by the definition of the word. A more talked about trauma in recent years has been the trauma's associated with sexual harassment and sexual violence. The #MeToo movement and the #TimesUp movement have highlighted how common it is for people, but especially those who identify as anything other than Cis-Male to be harassed on the nature of their being. Does this make the public trauma of this harassment 'banal'? The personal trauma connected to it can be hard to work with,  hard to survive and many of those dealing with more 'banal' types of trauma find it difficult to find the supportive environment they need due to the trauma being so common. 

The idea of publicly speak about a common trauma also brings up the experience of personal trauma. By involving others in a common trauma, does it normalise the trauma? Or does it make the trauma seem less severe? Then again, who can judge how sever one's trauma is? As said in the first paragraph Eichmann felt the trauma he experienced in his early life was enough to excuse his actions against the Jewish people later in life. He judged his own trauma to be severe enough to be excused. Most people, and more importantly the Judges, would disagree with him.