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Studies of traumatic stress have explored the challenges to memory as a result of extreme experience, particularly in relation to the ways in which trauma resonates within the survivor’s body and the difficulties survivors face when trying to incorporate their experience into meaningful narratives. Jennifer Griffiths examines the attempts of several African American writers and playwrights to explore ruptures in memory after a traumatic experience and to develop creative strategies for understanding the inscription of trauma on the body in a racialized cultural context. In the literary and performance texts examined here, Griffiths shows how the self is reconstituted through testimony—through the attempt to put into language and public statement the struggle of survivors to negotiate the limits placed on their bodies and to speak controversial truths. Dessa in her jail cell, Venus in the courtroom, Sally on the auction block, Ursa in her own family history, and Rodney King in the video frame—each character in these texts by Sherley Anne Williams, Suzan-Lori Parks, Robbie McCauley, Gayl Jones, and Anna Deavere Smith gives voice not only to the limits of language in representing traumatic experience but also to the necessity of testimony as the public enactment of memory and bodily witness. In focusing specifically and exclusively on the relation of trauma to race and on the influence of racism on the creation and reception of narrative testimony, this book distinguishes itself from previous studies of the literatures of trauma.
This book explores the intersections of sexualized, gendered, and racialized traumas in five US novels about father-daughter incest from the 1990s. It examines how incest can be connected to wider past and present structural oppression and institutional abuse, and what fiction looks like that testifies against and references a historical background of slavery, poverty, settler colonialism, annexation, and immigration. Investigating the means of resistance used against attempts at silencing and denial in these texts, the book also shows how contemporary women’s novels can propose social change. Overall, this study uniquely argues that the individual trauma of incest in these texts must be understood in relation to histories of and present collective wounding against marginalized communities. By sitting at the intersections between trauma theory and US third world feminism, it allows for theory to meet literary activism.
As part of the contemporary reassessment of trauma that goes beyond Freudian psychoanalysis, Laurie Vickroy theorizes trauma in the context of psychological, literary, and cultural criticism. Focusing on novels by Margaret Atwood, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Jeanette Winterson, and Chuck Palahniuk, she shows how these writers try to enlarge our understanding of the relationship between individual traumas and the social forces of injustice, oppression, and objectification. Further, she argues, their work provides striking examples of how the devastating effects of trauma—whether sexual, socioeconomic, or racial—on individual personality can be depicted in narrative. Vickroy offers a unique blend of interpretive frameworks. She draws on theories of trauma and narrative to analyze the ways in which her selected texts engage readers both cognitively and ethically—immersing them in, and yet providing perspective on, the flawed thinking and behavior of the traumatized and revealing how the psychology of fear can be a driving force for individuals as well as for society. Through this engagement, these writers enable readers to understand their own roles in systems of power and how they internalize the ideologies of those systems.
As a concept, 'trauma' has attracted a great deal of interest in literary studies. A key term in psychoanalytic approaches to literary study, trauma theory represents a critical approach that enables new modes of reading and of listening. It is a leading concept of our time, applicable to individuals, cultures, and nations. This book traces how trauma theory has come to constitute a discrete but influential approach within literary criticism in recent decades. It offers an overview of the genesis and growth of literary trauma theory, recording the evolution of the concept of trauma in relation to literary studies. In twenty-one essays, covering the origins, development, and applications of trauma in literary studies, Trauma and Literature addresses the relevance and impact this concept has in the field.
This collection of essays revises contemporary trauma theory, from Freudian/Caruthian and post-structuralist perspectives. While Western trauma theory is often theorized according to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), this volume discusses different forms of trauma that target decolonisation theories in Arab-Maghrebean and Afro-American contexts and Chinese narratives on courtesans. The contributors to this book also scrutinize the artistic representation of trauma in poetry and drama, adopting a cross-cultural approach to trauma theory.
The new edition of this bestselling literary theory anthology has been thoroughly updated to include influential texts from innovative new areas, including disability studies, eco-criticism, and ethics. Covers all the major schools and methods that make up the dynamic field of literary theory, from Formalism to Postcolonialism Expanded to include work from Stuart Hall, Sara Ahmed, and Lauren Berlant. Pedagogically enhanced with detailed editorial introductions and a comprehensive glossary of terms
Trauma has become a hotly contested topic in literary studies. But interest in trauma is not new; its roots extend to the Romantic period, when novelists and the first psychiatrists influenced each others' investigations of the »wounded mind«. This book looks back to these early attempts to understand trauma, reading a selection of Romantic novels in dialogue with Romantic and contemporary psychiatry. It then carries that dialogue forward to postmodern fiction, examining further how empirical approaches can deepen our theorizations of trauma. Within an interdisciplinary framework, this study reveals fresh insights into the poetics, politics, and ethics of trauma fiction.
ICPSY 2018 (International Conference on Biopsychosocial Issues in 2018) an Inter-multidiciplinary Approach was held to achieve the vision of the faculty of Psychology: becoming an academic community of psychology that is beneficial to multicultural communities with a biopsychosocial approach based on Christian values: love, justice and honesty. It is a pleasure to present these Proceedings of the First International Seminar and Wokshop on Biopsycology, which will be of interest to all concerned with the scientific aspects of this area. This seminar was organised by the Faculty of Psychology University of Psychology and brought together key note speakers Dr. Augustina Sulastri (Indonesia), Prof. Rosnah Ismail (Malaysia), Dr. Evangeline Castronuevo-Ruga (Philipine) and Ms. Janet Boekhout (The Netherlands) and participants from 4 countries for the presentation of 24 papers.
Ghost, Android, Animal challenges the notion that trauma literature functions as a healing agent for victims of severe pain and loss by bringing trauma studies into the orbit of posthumanist thought. Investigating how literary representations of ghosts, androids, and animals engage traumatic experience, this book revisits canonical texts by William Faulkner and Toni Morrison and aligns them with experimental and popular texts by Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick, and Clive Barker. In establishing this textual field, the book reveals how depictions of non-human agents invite readers to cross subjective and cultural thresholds and interact with the "impossible" pain of others. Ultimately, this study asks us to consider new practices for reading trauma literature that enlarges our conceptions of the human and the real.
The globalisation of psychiatry has helped shape the way suffering and recovery is experienced in Aceh, Indonesia, a region with a long history of violent conflict. In this book, Catherine Smith examines the global reach of the contested yet compelling concept of trauma, which has expanded well beyond the bounds of therapeutic practice to become a powerful cultural idiom shaping the ways social actors understand the effects of violence and imagine possible responses to suffering. In Aceh, conflict survivors have incorporated the globalised concept of trauma into local languages, healing practices and political imaginaries. The incorporation of this globalised idiom of distress into the Acehnese medical-moral landscape provides an ethnographic perspective on suffering and recovery, and contributes to contemporary debates about the globalisation of psychiatry and its ongoing expansion outside the domain of medicine.