Revisiting Childhood Trauma
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 6-2014 The Journey Back: Revisiting Childhood Trauma Ruth Lipman Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/249 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Lipman i THE JOURNEY BACK: REVISITING CHILDHOOD TRAUMA BY RUTH A. LIPMAN A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in French in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2014 Lipman ii © 2014 RUTH A. LIPMAN All Rights Reserved Lipman iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in French in satisfaction of the Dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Nancy K. Miller _________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Julia Przybos _________________ Date Executive Officer Nancy K. Miller Evelyne Ender Sondra Perl Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK Lipman iv ABSTRACT THE JOURNEY BACK: REVISITING CHILDHOOD TRAUMA by Ruth A. Lipman Adviser: Professor Nancy K. Miller This dissertation examines the adult’s endeavor to revisit childhood trauma in four sets of literary texts that are not typically studied together. These works, all published after 1968, address the central problem of revisiting childhood trauma in order to open a potential for mourning and sometimes for healing. I explore connections between individual/family trauma and collective/historical trauma. I argue that the use of objects and/or photographs is integral to the process of touching and representing the buried, embodied wounds of childhood, propelling the journeys and conveying the experience to the reader. Each pairing of literary works concerns a different kind of journey. Saul Friedländer’s Quand vient le souvenir and Sarah Kofman’s Rue Ordener/rue Labat emerge from the experiences of children, both members of the 1.5 generation of Holocaust survivors, who were hidden in France during World War II. Philippe Grimbert’s Un Secret and Patrick Modiano’s Dora Bruder are suffused with the presence of absence in which the first-person narrators, children of Holocaust survivors, who experience feelings of belatedness characteristic of the second generation, try to unravel secrets about people who perished during the Holocaust. Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory and Annie Ernaux’s L’Autre fille contrast texts with substantial differences in genre, style, setting and situation, but Danticat’s novel and Ernaux’s memoir L’Autre fille both focus on central themes of shame and secrecy. Marie Cardinal’s Les Mots pour le dire and Marie-Célie Agnant’s Le Livre d’Emma explore the theme of hidden truth. Locating embodied trauma and expressing it to an empathic Lipman v witness is the difficult and liberating trajectory of these two narratives. The analyses utilize a range of theoretical approaches such as theory about testimonial objects, postmemory and traumatic realism. I emphasize the role of the empathic witness as well as literary devices and structures (such as metaphors, homonyms and intertextuality) that are part of this process. Lipman vi Dedicated to the memory of my parents, Sue and Jack Lipman. Lipman vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my wonderful advisor, Distinguished Professor Nancy K. Miller. Her support, insights, suggestions about research and careful attention to my writing were invaluable. Thanks to the members of my committee for sharing their time and expertise. The informative discussions with Professor Sondra Perl about Holocaust studies and with Professor Evelyne Ender about psychological theory, memory and trauma were critical to my research. In addition, their comments on my writing helped to shape my dissertation. I am grateful to the professors who served as Executive Officer of the French program during the time that I was a student at the Graduate Center. Professors Francesca Sautman, Antoinette Blum, Peter Consenstein and Julia Przybos generously provided productive feedback at various stages of this project. Thanks to Assistant Program Officer Carole Kulikowski for her help. Finally, I would especially like to thank my partner, Harvey Cort, for his suggestions, encouragement and love. Lipman viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Fig. 1. Engraving by Hugo Steiner-Prag reproduced in Gustav Meyrink‘s Der Golem Fig. 2. Engraving by Hugo Steiner-Prag reproduced in Gustav Meyrink’s Der Golem Fig. 3. Leonardo da Vinci. “The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and the Infant Saint John the Baptist” Fig. 4. Leonardo da Vinci. “The Virgin and Child with St. Anne” Lipman ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract iv Acknowledgements vii List of Illustrations viii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Too Young to Understand: Saul Friedländer’s Quand vient le souvenir and Sarah Kofman’s Rue Ordener, Rue Labat 15 Chapter 2. Haunted by History: Philippe Grimbert’s Un Secret and Patrick Modiano’s Dora Bruder 65 Chapter 3. Shameful Secrets: Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory and Annie Ernaux’s L’Autre fille 126 Chapter 4. The Journey with the Empathic Witness: Marie Cardinal’s Les Mots pour le dire and Marie-Célie Agnant’s Le Livre d’Emma 193 Epilogue 238 Bibliography 243 Lipman 1 Introduction Why would an adult choose to travel back to revisit childhood trauma? Why wrestle with dark episodes from long ago? My dissertation focuses upon the journey back to childhood trauma as a possible means of healing that can enable one to live in the present. Literature can be a powerful vehicle for making these journeys. The literary works that I examine in my dissertation are: Saul Friedländer’s Quand vient le souvenir (1978), Sarah Kofman’s Rue Ordener, Rue Labat (1994), Patrick Modiano’s Dora Bruder (1997), Philippe Grimbert’s Un Secret (2004), Marie Cardinal’s Les Mots pour le dire (1975), Marie-Célie Agnant’s Le Livre d’Emma (2001), Annie Ernaux’s L’Autre fille (2011) and Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994).These eight works, all published after 1968, address this central problem: the endeavor to revisit and represent childhood trauma in order to open a potential for mourning and sometimes for healing. The difficult process of finding language with which to express and transmit traumatic experience that is held in the body is integral to the journey back. How does the writer represent this traumatic experience as a narrative and where does the writing take him/her? What happens when writers travel back in time in order to confront childhood trauma? How do they make the journey back? What techniques do they use to represent the process of revisiting childhood trauma? How do these post-war writers represent traumatic events in first person narratives-- some autobiographical, some fictional? How do they convey the experience that is located in the family where the first person narrator is the child writing as an adult through memory? These are the central questions my dissertation will address. Lipman 2 While most of the work done on trauma and related topics in the primary texts that I study treats each book separately, as part of a corpus of works by individual authors, or juxtaposed with other similar works of literature, I examine the adult’s endeavor to revisit childhood trauma in four sets of primary texts that are not typically studied together as pairs. Each pairing focuses upon a different kind of journey. In chapter 1, the focus of my study is upon the impossibility of fully comprehending what has happened because of the child’s age at the time of the traumatic event(s) and the disruption of identity formation resulting in a split or “twoness.” Sarah Kofman and Saul Friedländer both belong to what Susan Suleiman calls the 1.5 generation of Holocaust survivors.1 In their autobiographical texts, the child’s secure life within the family is irrevocably shattered. In chapter 2, I study Philippe Grimbert’s Un Secret (2004) and Patrick Modiano’s Dora Bruder (1997) together because both Modiano and Grimbert are children of Holocaust survivors. Un Secret is characterized as a novel, but it is semi-autobiographical. According to Denise Cima, Dora Bruder is situated between biography and autobiography; it contains elements of autofiction as well (Cima. Etude sur Patrick Modiano 3-4; 14-15).2 Despite the differences in genre, there are common themes that link these two works. As the narrators take journeys into periods of history that preceded their births, they seek answers to unanswered questions about trauma that was passed down to them as a legacy of shadows. I examine the representation of these journeys from haunting to healing. In chapter 3 (“Shameful Secrets”) I pair Edwidge Danticat’s novel Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) and Annie Ernaux’s latest memoir L’Autre fille (2011). Breath, Eyes, Memory is a fictional work, set in Haiti and in the United States, about a young woman, Sophie Cacao, who 1 Steven Jaron refers to this group as the liminal generation. See Jaron 207. 2 Autofiction is a term invented by Serge Doubrovsky in 1977. In a work of autofiction, the narrator has the same first name as the author; however, the writer invents another life for himself, modifying his own. See Cima 107. Lipman 3 had been conceived through rape and her life with her fragile, psychotic mother, Martine. L’Autre fille, set in France, is structured as a letter to Ernaux’s sister, Ginette, who died in 1938—two years before Ernaux’s birth in 1940. Both works concern a daughter’s shame.