Workplace Trauma and Fragmented Memory in Ben Pester’s The Expansion Project: A Trauma-Theoretical Reading of Surreal
Abstract
This article examines Ben Pester’s The Expansion Project through the lens of trauma theory, arguing that the novel represents corporate bureaucracy as a haunting mechanism that produces psychological fragmentation, erasure, and alienation. Drawing on Cathy Caruth’s concept of belated trauma, along with critical perspectives on bureaucracy, haunting, and surreal satire, the study explores how the novel transforms the modern workplace into a site of uncanny repetition, archival absence, and emotional disorientation. Through close textual analysis, the article shows that Pester uses surreal and satirical narrative strategies not merely for comic effect but to expose the dehumanizing structures of contemporary corporate life. The disappearance at the center of the narrative becomes both a personal trauma and a sign of bureaucratic violence, revealing how institutional systems erase lived experience. By linking workplace culture to trauma, haunting, and late-capitalist critique, this study positions The Expansion Project as an important literary intervention in discussions of modern labor, psychological distress, and contemporary British fiction.
