TRACING THE SCARS: TOWARDS A NEW READING OF TRAUMA

Abstract

In our contemporary cultural setting, the notion of “trauma” has been extended far beyond a clinical diagnosis and cultural trope into a signifier denoting a subjective reaction to experiences ranging from small grievances to large-scale tragedies. In a world where stories featuring traumatic subject matter have become part of our daily reading, is how we read, understand, and teach trauma still effective? This dissertation explores the ahistorical, subjective experience of trauma as represented in a selection of contemporary global literature, pushing back against canonical trauma literary theory posed by scholars such as Cathy Caruth and instead, suggests a new mode of reading traumatic representation. I argue that, by exploring both the wounded mind and the wounded body, with attention to the influence of the traumatic context and close-reading the nuance of the figurative language of representation, we have much new knowledge to gain. Additionally, as trauma narratives appear regularly in higher education as Common Reads and on literature class syllabi, this dissertation offers practical suggestions for a teaching of traumatic narratives which is sensitive to both the subject matter and the student audience. Chapter 1 begins by exploring contemporary, media-based accounts of trauma, highlighting the dangers of the fetishization and commodification of the traumatized body, particularly traumatized bodies of color, before discussing two examples of public trauma performance: Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a national protest against the “disappearing” of dissentients of Argentina’s “Dirty War” and Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight), a work of endurance performance art by former Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz. Chapter 2 provides a comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary study of trauma and the main arguments and criticisms of literary trauma theory, including the marginalization of non-Western trauma, the prioritization of a Western understanding of trauma and recovery, the emphasizing of traumatic representation through a Modernist, fragmented approach, and the disregarding of the connections between Western and non-Western traumas. From this foundation, I pose my own approach for reading and teaching trauma narratives, suggesting that by close reading trauma in context, with the inclusion of the traumatized body, readers and students more effectively understand trauma and traumatic situations and therefore, are better prepared as global citizens. Chapters 3-5 then demonstrates my application of this lens to a selection of texts, exploring the trauma of both well-known novels and unknown novels and memoirs. Chapter 3 centers on war trauma in Hanan al-Shaykh's Beirut Blues (1992), Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost (2000) and Nora Okja Keller’s Fox Girl (2002) in an effort to extend war trauma discussions to the unheard voices of non-combatants. Chapter 4 explicates the notion of intergenerational trauma, time, and memory before offering a new and potentially fresh reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1988), a novel heralded as the preeminent example of the trauma narrative genre, Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) and Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries: A Memoir (2018), concluding that intergenerational trauma manifests in different ways within different marginalized populations. In Chapter 5, I address the mind-body split heralded by canonical trauma theory, focusing on the body as a “text” of cultural trauma, and then apply the theory to critical readings of the traumatized and othered bodies of Edwidge Danicat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) and Fadia Faqir’s The Cry of the Dove (2007). In sum, I emphasized looking both looking at the trauma trope and beyond it. It is my hope that this evolved understanding will have broad applications for reading trauma narratives, as using this mode of inquiry will more fully achieve active witnessing, especially when reading non-Western literature. I conclude by offering a pragmatic, theoretical approach for teaching trauma narratives which connects trauma to historical or cultural context and therefore, offers a greater avenue for education about experiences which may be very different than one’s own experiences.