| Summary: | Recent literary trauma scholarship has conceded that the ‘classic’ trauma model, founded upon a Freudian-Lacanian approach to trauma and language, has plateaued in its usefulness. Whilst literary trauma critics have since developed more pluralistic definitions of trauma in an attempt to extend this model, this thesis looks, instead, to reconfigure the model’s poststructuralist definition of language. It argues for a way of reading language that returns more closely to a literary approach: thinking of language as something that creates rather than something that names.
Unlike the ‘classic’ trauma model, which assumes that a victim has to articulate her trauma in order for her experience to be understood, the approach advanced here, firstly, opens up a way for critics to bear witness to the stories about trauma that have been created by and told circuitously through various literary forms. As such, it has the potential to explore the issues within literary trauma discourse that have remained outside the ‘classic’ model’s reach, because of the difficulty of naming these experiences explicitly. Secondly, as examining literary form emphasises the way a reader co-creates the meaning of a story, this approach pays attention to how literary texts create the reader-witness. It recognises that nuanced trauma discourse is derived not only from writers telling good stories about trauma, but also has as much to do with how a reader-witness interprets and listens to these narratives. This approach thus challenges critics to examine the ways in which their reading and witnessing have supported, or hindered, the emergence of stories of trauma, and explore more ethical ways to read literary trauma texts.
To demonstrate the extent to which this approach can be applied to different narratives, I examine post-war trauma narratives set in three contexts (Europe/America, Southeast Asia, and South Asia), at varying points between 1945–2009, each corresponding with a different stage of the trauma-healing process. I explore how examining literary form makes it possible for a reader to engage each text in context and identify the specific role that surfaces for her as reader-witness. In a larger scope of literary trauma discourse, this approach provides the grounds for further investigation into the crucial role that reading as witnessing plays in healing a community in a range of contexts and stages in the aftermath of trauma.
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