Introduction: Black holes in the sciences - trauma, culture, aesthetics

Drawing on philosophy, trauma theory and aesthetics, this issue of PUBLIC presents trauma in its complexity of experience across cultures and individuals. Trauma is a common, empathy-ready experience that we might engage as mirror to our pained or apathetic responses, and might harness to light personal political fires. Traumatic response is framed beyond mental illness or coping, as a symptom of a larger cognitively informed process, begging for query beyond social science models, where processed thought and perception are embodied processes residing in a world rife with complex aesthetic representations and simulations.