what I have not worked out yet is the relationship between joy and trauma. if trauma is a condition of breach, indistinction and speechlessness, does the possibility of ecstasy or something like it arise at the breach? everyone I read says no but I am not sure whether they mean that trauma and ecstasy should never be associated or if they are being careful to note that ecstasy, properly speaking, cannot obtain in trauma precisely because there is no delimited region to be outside of: no self to transcend. what we get is something akin to perversity--but how do we draw the distinction between the perversity of play and the trauma of violence? they are so close as to overlap at times but are they "metaphysically" identical?
I feel a dissertation coming on.