Contemporary American Trauma Narratives

Gibbs, Alan

doi:10.1515/9780748694082

Cited by 20 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Notwithstanding the use of time travel as part of a complicated philosophical outlook, the writer positioned an antihero at the centre of the novel to discuss the structure of time by referring to his deteriorated psychology. As Alan Gibbs (2014) accentuates that Vonnegut, Billy witnesses the devastating fire-bombing of Dresden, which leaves him in a permanently dissociative traumatised state. He is prone to fantasies [...] that he travels, albeit involuntarily, in time, Vonnegut discusses time in the novel as both real space and psychological space.…”

Section: Trauma and Time Perception In Slaughterhouse-fivementioning

confidence: 99%

Dispersal of time and trauma in postmodern novel: Slaughterhouse-Five

KALECİK

2023

RumeliDE Dil Ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi

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Wars cause trauma and disruption of temporal sequencing, leading to fragmentation of memory in survivors. This fragmentation leads to negative changes in the victims' posttraumatic relationships and character traits. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) is a novel about war trauma in which WWII is satirized with the use of a nonlinear narrative and post-war traumatic self. The novel presents to the reader how an innocent man survives in a drastic war atmosphere by chance and how his life changes after the war in both a playful and critical manner. Although Slaughterhouse-Five broadly delineates the theme of the destructiveness of war, specifically Vonnegut draws attention to the distorted memory of a traumatized young man with an ironic stance. Thereby, presenting the reader an opportunity to delve into a mind in which the compulsory conditions about temporality and liminality are abolished, Vonnegut turns his narrative into a play that reflects both joy and suffering owing to the collapse of sequence in time. Making extensive use of the means of metafiction, the author reveals his war experiences and the hidden sides of WWII. Therefore, this study aims to analyze Vonnegut’s ironic approach to war trauma, distorted perception of time, and their reflection on fiction in a postmodern sense.

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Section: Trauma and Time Perception In Slaughterhouse-fivementioning

confidence: 99%

Dispersal of time and trauma in postmodern novel: Slaughterhouse-Five

KALECİK

2023

RumeliDE Dil Ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi

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“…The drawbacks of the Eurocentricity of trauma theory after 9/11 also became a vital area of criticism. Gibbs (2014) and Bond (2020) argue that the aftermath not only exposed the "increasingly monolithic and programmatic critical prism" of trauma studies but also "enable[d] a sense of false innocence to take root and deflect attention from America's complicity in actions both before and after 9/11" (Gibbs, 2014, p. 121). Therefore, two main sections are evolving; master narratives and counternarratives that work against each other.…”

Section: /11 Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

Kachachi’s The American Granddaughter Beyond Victims and Perpetrators of September 11: The Implicated Subject in Inaam

Alqahtani¹

2023

AWEJ‑tls

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September 11 events took a heavy toll on many countries, particularly Iraq. Ever since those events, the white American literary and critical responses dominated the mainstream of the 9/11 novel subgenre with a significant focus on the resulting trauma on white Americans. Therefore, this paper seeks to broaden the critical scope of the 9/11 novel subgenre apart from the white American majority by implementing trauma theory to view the impact of 9/11 events on Iraqi people in their homeland as represented in Inaam Kachachi’s (2008) The American Granddaughter. Its significance lies in attempting to decenter the 9/11 trauma by shifting the debate from the ethical and legal accountability of who destroyed whom to foregrounding other sites of injustices that attest to forms of the implication and voice earlier suppressed pains and worries. The main question is how Kachachi, a Paris-based Iraqi novelist, portrayed the 9/11 traumatic aftermath in the novel through the perspective of an Iraqi/American female interpreter who worked for the American army during the Iraq War. Drawing on trauma theory, this study investigates the protagonist’s complex position, which best exemplifies Michael Rothberg’s theory of implication, where a participant in a traumatic experience occupies a position aligned with power and privilege without being a direct agent of harm. This paper finds that the novel contributes to the 9/11 novel counternarratives and confirms the implication of Iraqi/American people during the Iraq War that divulged the silenced personal and collective traumatic narratives spanning several Iraqi generations.

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“…According to these theorists, this tenet helps to understand the effects of traumatic events that form part of the victim's daily lives, including physical and sexual abuse, cultural atrocities, natural calamities, and emotional abuse. It also includes what Gibbs (2014) terms the "colonial experience, which is a key marker of insidious trauma" (16). This colonial experience, and the resulting trauma, are transmitted through generations.…”

Section: Theorising Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

‘To Name the Unnameable is a Curse’: Silence as an Enunciation of Trauma in Yvonne Owuor’s Dust (2014) and The Dragonfly Sea (2019)

Omwocha

2022

East Afr. j. arts soc. sci.

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Various studies have interrogated the language of silence as a powerful tool of communication. This paper adds to such studies by interrogating silence as an enunciation of trauma in Yvonne Owuor’s texts Dust (2014) and The Dragonfly Sea (2019). Focusing on the characters of Akai and Ajany in Dust and Munira and Ayaana in The Dragonfly Sea, this paper is a critical interrogation of how these characters use silence to narrate their traumas. The characters under interrogation embody silence as the language of trauma in this postcolonial nation. They seem plagued by the memories of the traumatic experiences they undergo and this hinders their ability to use speech to articulate their pain. The paper starts with an introduction that covers an overview of related literature and then goes on to explore the binaries between lack of verbal speech, oppression, resistance, and trauma as espoused by the female characters. This paper also analyses the depiction of violence and silencing of the female characters by the men in their lives and on a larger scale, the silence enforced by state machineries and its metaphoric function in this post-independent country. Therefore, interpreting silence offers a multiplicity of meanings and different layers and convergences of meanings upon which it may be interpreted. It also discusses breaking that silence, a signifier of healing. The study is based on Literary Trauma Theory and trauma theory tenets as advanced by the following trauma theorists: Cathy Caruth, Dominic LaCapra, Judith Herman, Maria Root, Alan Gibbs, and Laura Brown

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Contemporary American Trauma Narratives

Cited by 20 publications

References 0 publications

Dispersal of time and trauma in postmodern novel: Slaughterhouse-Five

Dispersal of time and trauma in postmodern novel: Slaughterhouse-Five

Kachachi’s The American Granddaughter Beyond Victims and Perpetrators of September 11: The Implicated Subject in Inaam

‘To Name the Unnameable is a Curse’: Silence as an Enunciation of Trauma in Yvonne Owuor’s Dust (2014) and The Dragonfly Sea (2019)

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