’Performing Trauma’: Change and Transformation in Performative Bodily and Visual Expressions among Women Displaced from the Gaza Border Communities after the Traumatic Events of October 7

Traumatic experiences may disrupt bodily boundaries, the sense of control, and personal identity, manifesting not only at the psychological level but also in the ways the body appears and acts in the world. Because the human body is almost always encountered in social space as a dressed body, clothing may be understood not merely as an external covering but as an integral part of how the body is experienced, presented, and imbued with meaning. Consequently, examining trauma through the body alone leaves outside the analytical frame clothing, which constitutes an inseparable dimension of the body’s social appearance. Although extensive scholarship has explored the ways trauma is inscribed on the body and shapes processes of identity formation, and has separately examined the relationship between clothing and identity, the intersection of trauma, the dressed body, and identity has received little scholarly attention. The present study addresses this gap by examining the complex relationship between clothing, identity, and trauma through the experiences of women evacuated from communities surrounding the Gaza Strip following the events of October 7, 2023.

The study is grounded in performative approaches that conceptualize identity as an ongoing process constituted through action, appearance, and impression management within the social sphere (Butler, 1990; Goffman, 1959; Schechner, 1985/2017). From this perspective, clothing is understood not merely as an external expression of identity but as a performative arena in which the relationships among body, clothing, identity, and trauma are enacted and continually reorganized throughout the recovery process. Accordingly, the dressed body is conceptualized as a space in which trauma, loss, and recovery are not only narrated but also embodied and rendered visible.

The study employed an interpretative phenomenological qualitative methodology and was based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 17 women who had been evacuated from their homes in communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. The interviews were conducted approximately two years after the events of October 7, 2023.

Through these interviews, the study explored the meanings participants attributed to changes in their bodies, clothing, and outward appearance across the trajectory of coping with trauma. The interviews followed a chronological sequence, beginning with life before October 7, continuing through experiences in protected spaces, rescue, evacuation, displacement, and the loss of home, and concluding with participants' everyday lives approximately two years later. At each stage of this journey, attention was directed toward the dressed body and the transformations it underwent in order to understand how these changes were experienced, interpreted, and imbued with meaning as part of the processes of coping, meaning-making, and identity formation.

The findings yielded three themes representing a three-stage movement:

1. Holding onto the Body: The Dressed Body Between Abandonment and Choice 
2. Wearing Routine: Clothing and Self-Worth in Post-Traumatic Reality 
3. Dressing into the Self: Body and Clothing as Spaces for the Construction of an Integrative Identity 

Analysis of the interviews revealed a three-stage movement through which coping and recovery became embodied in the dressed body. During the first stage, the dressed body was experienced as exposed, abandoned, and deprived of boundaries. Alongside the loss of bodily integrity, participants described small acts of preservation, such as wearing a particular garment, safeguarding specific clothing items, or maintaining personal hygiene. These actions represented attempts to restore a sense of control and preserve a minimal repertoire of agency within a chaotic reality. During the second stage, encompassing evacuation and temporary living arrangements, clothing became a space through which everyday routines and self-worth were reorganized. Daily practices such as getting dressed, purchasing clothes, and managing one's appearance functioned as means of restoring control while maintaining bodily and narrative continuity. During the third stage, clothing emerged as a site for constructing an integrative identity - A space in which participants could ‘dress into themselves’ anew, expand their repertoire of possible actions, and reconstruct identity by integrating the traumatic experience into an evolving life narrative.

The discussion proposes a conceptual extension of Herman’s model of trauma recovery through a performative lens, suggesting that the developmental tasks characterizing each of Herman's three stages may be understood as taking shape through three performative dimensions: performative action, embodied self-storytelling, and performative subjectivity.

Within this conceptual framework, the study introduces the notion of embodied self-storytelling to describe the ways in which the self is constituted not only through verbal narrative but also through the dressed body as stories are written, worn, and performed. From this perspective, recovery is understood not merely as a psychological or narrative process but also as an embodied process expressed through action, appearance, and impression management.

Unlike previous studies, which have examined clothing primarily as a therapeutic tool or as an intentional intervention, the present study conceptualizes clothing as an everyday practice through which processes of coping, adaptation, and recovery are expressed spontaneously over time. Rather than proposing a structured therapeutic model or positioning clothing as a therapeutic technique in itself, the study cautiously suggests that attending to everyday practices of dress, grooming, and appearance may broaden the clinical understanding of trauma recovery. Changes in the dressed body may thus serve as an additional source of information - Functioning as a visual index of the ways bodily experience and identity are reorganized throughout recovery - and may open an additional avenue for dialogue, reflection, and meaning-making.

Accordingly, the dressed body emerges as a site in which trauma is not only inscribed but where new forms of presence, agency, and identity also come into being. Within this performative arena, the possibility of performing trauma expands beyond representing injury or making suffering visible, toward a process of subjective becoming in which body, clothing, and identity are continuously reconfigured in the aftermath of trauma.