Book Review: All My Friends Live in My Computer

Review of Rajabi, Samira. All My Friends Live in My Computer: Trauma, Tactical Media, and Meaning. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021. 157 pp. ISBN (paperback): 9781978818958.

By Scott Tulloch, Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York

Rajabi (2021) argues digital media platforms generate novel opportunities for sufferers of trauma to make sense of their experience. Rajabi’s perspective hinges on an expansive “de-medicalized” definition of trauma, to include “all those experiences that dismantles mean-making schema and call into question the social, cultural, and physical understandings of how differing bodies and identities fit into the cultural world” (9). Digital media platforms provide space for sufferers to reconstruct meaning-making schema, a sense of identity, and belonging in community. Furthermore, digital media enable sufferers to position themselves relative to normative constructs and engage in “micro-political acts of resistance” (128).

Rajabi forwards a secondary argument, presenting an innovative conceptualization of “symbolic trauma” that builds from Bourdieu’s (1989) notion of symbolic violence. The concept describes an experience of trauma caused by symbolic violence, often by institutions and systems of control. While these wounds are symbolic, they are nevertheless embodied and have material effects. The concept of symbolic trauma invites overt political analysis and attends to the erasure of a range of traumatic experiences neglected by medicalized definitions (16–17).

The monograph is divided in two parts. Part one details theoretical arguments and surveys literature across three chapters. Rajabi introduces the theses and provides an outline of chapters in the first chapter. Rajabi highlights her conceptualization of symbolic trauma, situating the concept within literature of trauma studies, in the second chapter. Rajabi focuses on narration of trauma in media, contrasting legacy media with new affordances of digital mediatization in the third chapter.

Part two consists of three cases studies. Rajabi, in the first case study, analyzes online discourse surrounding the trauma of Jennifer Merendino, who died of metastatic breast cancer in 2011. Angelo Merendino, Jennifer’s husband, mediated their suffering in raw photojournalistic style by posting regularly to a blog entitled The Battle We Didn’t Choose. Angelo’s photographs of Jennifer, their articulations of grief and suffering were remediated globally, spread as memes across a variety of social media platforms, and presented in online news outlets and a TED talk delivered by Angelo. The Merendino’s testimony helped them make sense, create a community of support, and enabled observers to experience vicarious trauma and empathetic witnessing.

Rajabi, in the second case study, maps transformation of meaning-making schema following the injury of Kevin Ogar, an amateur CrossFit athlete, during a competition in 2014. Ogar’s injury occurred while performing a snatch, which involves lifting a weighted dumbbell from the ground to an overhead position in a fluid motion. Video of Ogar’s injury quickly spread across social media. The images entered mainstream news media, which frequently criticized CrossFit for putting athletes at risk. The CrossFit community was galvanized by the incident and indictment from outside, forming crowdfunding initiatives to support Ogar’s medical care. Ogar, through YouTube and various social media outlets, shared his recovery experience and reengagement with CrossFit as an adaptive athlete in a wheelchair. Ogar became personified in the hashtag #OgarStrong and a stylized meme, featuring a silhouette of Ogar’s recognizable red hair and beard integrated into the iconic Superman logo. The CrossFit community mediated a narrative establishing Ogar as a symbol of heroic inspiration and embodiment of triumph over pain, reinforcing CrossFit’s central values. This case study is particularly important for its representation of contradictory dynamics, emphasizing the way sufferers utilize digital spaces as a resistive act, to articulate alternative meanings, while also commodifying and reifying the ethos of a cultural group that may contribute to further harm.

Rajabi, in the third case study, describes digital responses of Iranian American diaspora to the symbolic trauma of Executive Order 13769, commonly referred to as the “Muslim Ban,” which suspended entry into the United States for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia. Digital media become repositories for suffering caused by the ban. Rajabi maps digital meaning-making across five noteworthy social media presences, including: Maz Jobrani, a prominent comedian that frequently appeared on The Late Show with Steven Colbert; Banned Grandmas, an Instagram feed started by Holly Dagres after recognizing the popularity of an image she posted of her grandmother on Twitter with the hashtag #grandparentsnotterrorists; Diaspora Letters, an Instagram feed that features Beeta Baghoolizadeh’s black and white line drawings representing her diaspora experiences; Before we Were Banned, an online/offline art show that solicited art in response to the ban on Instagram; and Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American council. The case study demonstrates how sufferers cope with and tactically engage symbolic trauma through mediation, by going online to perform acts of micro-political resistance by circulating their own meanings, creating space for alternative discourses and communities to exist.

Rajabi, in All My Friends Live in My Computer, offers significant contributions to the fields of trauma and media studies. These contributions are even more relevant with public proliferation of the concept in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing mass shooting and racialized violence. The core strength of this monograph resides in the case studies detailing the myriad of creative ways sufferers represent, make sense of trauma, and engage in meaningful coping processes through digital media. In addition, Rajabi demonstrates an impressively coherent method for analysis of dispersed digital mediated texts, which could serve as a model for future research in digital culture and media studies. These descriptive and methodological strengths, best represented in the first two case studies, warrant acquisition of this text and attention from audiences interested in trauma and digital media studies.

The monograph takes on autoethnographic narration at times. Rajabi situates herself as a sufferer familiar with experiences of trauma, as an Iranian American living through the “Muslim Ban,” a patient undergoing ongoing treatment for a brain tumor, and a daughter grappling with her mother’s cancer diagnosis. Rajabi carries an authentic urgency and palpable sense of care in her voice that underpins the argument and reinforces the case studies.

There are limitations worth noting. Rajabi’s notion of symbolic trauma is well justified and theorized in part one of the text, unfortunately the phenomenon is less fleshed out in case studies. The first two case studies are examples aligned with traditional medical conceptions of trauma. Only the third case study, focusing on the “Muslim Ban,” directly engages the notion of symbolic trauma. The case study has breadth, in the analysis of five prominent social media presences, but lacks the cohesion and depth of the previous case studies that more comprehensively mapped ongoing responses and remediation to demonstrate processes of meaning-making, identity and community formation. More support and additional case studies are warranted to demonstrate digital practices in response to symbolic trauma. Lack of development in case studies to support this concept undermines one of the most significant, leading-edge contributions of the text. Despite these limitations, the book is original, worthy of acquisition, and close reading by audiences interested in the intersections of trauma and media studies.

Works Cited

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1989. “Social Space and Symbolic Power.” Sociological Theory 7 (I): 14–25.