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Other Cultures of Trauma: Meta-Metropolitan Narratives and Identities

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Other Cultures of Trauma: Meta-Metropolitan Narratives and Identities OTHER CULTURES OF TRAUMA: META-METROPOLITAN NARRATIVES AND IDENTITIES By SOPHIE CROISY A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2006 Copyright 2006 by Sophie Croisy TABLE OF CONTENTS page ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................1 Why Use Literature for That Project? ..........................................................................3 Other Literatures about Trauma....................................................................................8 2 AN ARCHEOLOGY OF TRAUMA: PROGRESSIVE CONTEMPORARY THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS FOR TALKING ABOUT TRAUMA...............15 A Linear Timeline and Beyond ..................................................................................15 Testimonies about Trauma: the Re-writing of History and the Re-birth of the Subject....................................................................................................................23 Rethinking the Theory of Origin: Trauma Beyond Originology, Beyond the Singular Archive ....................................................................................................26 Catastrophic Traumas, Everyday Traumas: Rethinking the Texture of History ........31 New Methods of Coping with Trauma: Beyond Rational and One-dimensional Theoretical Responses to Trauma and Towards Hysterical Readings of Trauma Narratives...............................................................................................................34 Further into the Politics of Emotion: Trauma, Mourning and Melancholia, an Awesome Threesome in the Search for Identity Reparation .................................39 History, Memory, Performativity, and Identity..........................................................47 Trauma and Language ................................................................................................53 3 QUEER THINKER, NATIVE THINKER: BUTLER’S AND SILKO’S RETHINKING OF TRADITIONAL NOTIONS OF TRAUMA AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRAUMA, PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND HISTORY...................................................................................................................57 Trauma and History: The Problem of Entangled Threads..........................................57 One Grief Leads to Another: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Critique of the American State’s Racist Agenda during WW II.....................................................................61 Healing through Death: Contemporary Issues of Survival and the Role of Collective Understanding across National Borders ...............................................69 Violence and Death: the Cement of history................................................................72 Is it possible to desymbolize the symbolic? ...............................................................78 iii Silko’s Story-telling Performance: Against the theory of Origin, Against the Symbolization of Trauma ......................................................................................81 Silko’s Almanac: Deconstructing the Western Lie with and through the Dead.........94 4 MELANCHOLIC MOURNING: RE-ENVISIONING TRADITIONAL RESPONSES TO MOURNING. THE CASE OF ALGERIA AFTER INDEPENDENCE (LINGUISTIC TRAUMA AND IDENTITY REFORMATION) ....................................................................................................101 Languages in Algeria: Another Archeology of Trauma...........................................102 French Language in Algeria after Independence......................................................105 French Language and the Nationalism of post- Civil War Algeria..........................112 Algerian Literature as a Site of Linguistic Plurality.................................................114 Arabic and the Process of Arabization after Independence......................................115 The fate of Arabic in the 1990s ................................................................................119 Languages of Multiculturalism.................................................................................127 Thinking and Writing poetically with Language......................................................130 Conclusion to the Chapter ........................................................................................133 5 MICHELLE CLIFF’S NON-WESTERN FIGURES OF TRAUMA: THE CREOLIZATION OF TRAUMA STUDIES ...........................................................137 Recontextualizing Creolization ................................................................................137 Caribbean Traumas...................................................................................................141 Trauma as Site of Memory and Identity...................................................................145 New Evaluations of Traumatic Return, Departure, and Repetition..........................149 New Figures of Trauma, New Figures of Knowledge..............................................153 No Telephone to Heaven: Resistance against Nationalistic, Traumatic Use and Abuse of Creole/Hybrid Rhetoric ........................................................................165 6 CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................171 LIST OF REFERENCES.................................................................................................179 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...........................................................................................183 iv Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy OTHER CULTURES OF TRAUMA: META-METROPOLITAN NARRATIVES AND IDENTITIES By Sophie Croisy May 2006 Chair: Julian Wolfreys Major Department: English This dissertation draws on psychoanalytical theory (both by reclaiming its use and dispelling its myths), queer theory, and post-colonial literature (and theory) to propose new ways of analyzing trauma (personal and communal, the two being intricately linked). This work is grounded in traumatic history and seeks to recuperate and analyze the erased traumas of history in order to think about new, sometimes uncanny, methods of coping with or seeking reparation for the bodily, psychological, and political disaster that is trauma. These new methods are born out of an analysis/critique of conventional psychoanalytical responses to traumatic events, an analysis which involves a conversation between different frames of thinking (psychoanalysis, queer theory, and postcolonial literature/theory as mentioned above) through which I can unveil the characteristics of irresponsible responses to trauma and propose what I believe are productive, performative responses to the forgotten disasters of history. v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Trauma studies today are the preferred site of both subtle (or blatant) rivalry and useful sharing between theorists who use psychoanalysis (often in relation to literature as its twin theoretical framework), history and postmodern theory as the main contexts for thinking about trauma. If these aforementioned theoretical frameworks seem to be the most conducive to discussions of trauma and its consequences in our thinking about time, memory, witnessing, and history, this list is of course far from being exhaustive. As a matter of fact, brain specialists, feminist theorists, sociologists, political scientists, and others have discussed trauma-related issues using (and oftentimes critiquing) the context, the theoretical positions, offered by their field for better or for worse. Even though I will include a discussion of an important book by queer thinker Ann Cvetkovich in Chapter 2, a chapter which outlines the theoretical perspectives I will develop in subsequent chapters, my archeology of trauma in this first chapter will essentially be influenced by authors who dwell in the fields of psychoanalysis, history, and postmodern theory. If some of these authors often rely more heavily on one of these three frames of reference to think about trauma, they often do so in order to critique certain conservative aspects of these very frames, as well as describe a series of points of convergence between progressive discussions taking place in these different fields--hence these authors’ complex and challenging additions to the area of trauma studies. In my first chapter, even though I briefly outline in the beginning the evolution in time of main discussions in the field of trauma studies, a circular pattern quickly replaces 1 2 this linear introduction. Together, the authors whose work I will be looking at draw knowledge circles ad infinitum around this theoretical and practical challenge that is called trauma, encircling and speculating around this hypothesis, agitating and intermingling theoretical frameworks in the process. My purpose in the coming chapters is to problematize and add layers to contemporary conversations on trauma through 1) a critique of certain theoretical perspectives on trauma which have originated in Europe and the United States; 2) a focus on the most useful ‘first-world’ discussions on the aftermath of trauma and an opening up towards the multiple, performative
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