A post-traumatic subject is…a victim who, as it were, survives its own death: all different forms of traumatic encounters, independent of their specific nature (social, natural, biological, symbolic), lead to the same result: a new subject emerges which survives death (erasure) of its symbolic identity. There is no continuity between this new post-traumatic subject (the victim of Alzheimer’s, say) and its old identity: after the shock, a new subject emerges. (86)
Zizek describes this subject as Zombie-like:
It features a lack of emotional engagement, profound indifference and detachment; it is a subject who is no longer ‘in-the-world’ in the Heideggerian sense of engaged embodied existence. The subject lives death as a form of life. (86)
