Is Your Trauma Iconic? Programming Trauma in the Age of Media.

The title of this paper comprises of a question. A question in its essence is the opening of an aporia an undecidability that refuses to settle down. Bearing relevance to the past and the exigency to master it in future. Julian Wolfrey, in his essay "Trauma, Testimony, and Criticism", characterizes trauma as aporia, a wound with unending trail. Thus, question in itself is proportional to trauma it does not let you go unless you find an answer or at least find a way to master it (a way to deal with the question). The question that this paper sets to answer is the question of trauma and its iconography in the times of the invasion of media on our mental and personal scape. When media has become a necessity for the validation of reality as if it is not enough that life is experienced, it must be seen to be experienced. It seeks to understand what makes trauma Iconic in a visual culture where meanings are constructed and contested through visuals. What shapes trauma in the world that appears to be divided on the question of race, ethnicity religion and location more than ever. When the Capital has commodified all aspects of everyday life, including the human body even the process of looking itself. Has the decentralisation of discourse, image, and text through the social media any effect on lending trauma the democracy to represent what it actually constitutes? How is it so that the outrageous instances of violence, traumatised subjects and the images of torture are redacted by media to avoid evoking any empathy.  The paper is an effort to find answers to these questions or at least seeks to engage with these questions. However, to do so I will first of all try to establish a relationship between the trauma and media, its origin and interpretation and then proceed by deliberating on the ways how media programmes trauma in the contemporary times