ABSTRACT
Trauma in Contemporary Literature analyzes contemporary narrative texts in English in the light of trauma theory, including essays by scholars of different countries who approach trauma from a variety of perspectives. The book analyzes and applies the most relevant concepts and themes discussed in trauma theory, such as the relationship between individual and collective trauma, historical trauma, absence vs. loss, the roles of perpetrator and victim, dissociation, nachträglichkeit, transgenerational trauma, the process of acting out and working through, introjection and incorporation, mourning and melancholia, the phantom and the crypt, postmemory and multidirectional memory, shame and the affects, and the power of resilience to overcome trauma. Significantly, the essays not only focus on the phenomenon of trauma and its diverse manifestations but, above all, consider the elements that challenge the aporias of trauma, the traps of stasis and repetition, in order to reach beyond the confines of the traumatic condition and explore the possibilities of survival, healing and recovery.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |56 pages
Global Trauma and the End of History
part |77 pages
Trauma and the Power of Narrative
chapter |15 pages
The Turn to the Self and History in Eva Figes' Autobiographical Works
chapter |16 pages
Plight versus Right
chapter |18 pages
Seeing It Twice
chapter |14 pages
The Burden of the Old Country's History on the Psyche of Dominican-American Migrants
part |99 pages
Trauma and the Problem of Representation