View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Carolina Digital Repository The Corporeal Trauma Narratives of Gayl Jones’s Corregidora, Phyllis Alesia Perry’s Stigmata and Luisa Valenzuela’s Cambio de armas Camille Terese Passalacqua A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2009 Approved by: Trudier Harris María DeGuzmán Ariel Dorfman Madeline G. Levine Monica Rector 2009 Camille Terese Passalacqua ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Camille Terese Passalacqua: The Corporeal Trauma Narratives of Gayl Jones’s Corregidora, Phyllis Alesia Perry’s Stigmata and Luisa Valenzuela’s Cambio de armas (Under the direction of Professor Trudier Harris) All of the conflicts and ensuing traumas examined in these literary narratives address the suppression of a national consciousness about the severity of the crimes committed against certain groups of individuals in the Americas—against Africans forced into slavery and the descendants of these enslaved individuals, and against the victims of Argentina’s recent national conflict. This dissertation investigates the wounded and violated female body as the site for healing from and integration of individual and collective traumatic experiences. This four-chapter investigation draws from trauma theorists working in various disciplines, such as Cathy Caruth, Dori Laub, Shoshana Felman, Dominick LaCapra, Judith Lewis Herman, and Elaine Scarry, in order to establish the theoretical approaches to traumatic memory, testimony, and witnessing. Any theoretical exploration into the representation and articulation of trauma must include a return to the body as not just the site for pain, wounding, and separation of self from body and soul. I suggest the body is more than merely an instrument or animated canvas that the mind and soul use. Rather, the body is essential to how the person is made present and expresses herself in the world. Therefore, violently inflicted trauma fractures and separates this intimate relationship between the body, mind, and soul. iii Whereas previous studies of the wounded body discuss the ways in which violence on the body determines identity and functions as another form of text and witnessing, I reposition the critical lens to examine how the wounded body tells a different story. My project suggests that the female protagonists find ways to reconstruct themselves in light of their individual trauma by resorting to languages not only verbal to tell their stories. Through the very encounter with their physical and psychological wounding, the female characters individually access and come to know their traumas, and they also transmit their stories to another individual, which is essential for integration of the past with the present self. iv To my beloved family v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to my committee members who I had the tremendous fortune to work with while at Carolina—María DeGuzmán, Ariel Dorfman, Madeline G. Levine, and Monica Rector. Our numerous conversations on the intriguing yet often-difficult topic of trauma inform and influence this project in untold ways. It is a blessing for me that our lives intersected in this way. The unconditional love, care, and support so many of my friends freely gave and continue to give especially during the writing of this project is humbling. It is an abundant blessing to say that you are too many to name here. You know who you are. You continue to inspire me to give of myself more freely. I offer my deepest gratitude to Trudier Harris whose enthusiasm, support, and sense of humor compelled me to keep writing. She continually encourages me to find my voice as a scholar, teacher, and woman. Thank you will never be enough. To my sister, Gia, who kept me nourished in mind and body with our long conversations and her delightful culinary creations during my many trips home to California. Finally, all of my gratitude goes most especially to my parents, Donna and Fred, whose love and unwavering enthusiasm for and earnest interest in this project helped keep me grounded. Thank you for teaching me the ever important lesson that each person possesses an inherent dignity asking for our respect. This life-lesson led me to this project. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Embodied Memories of Trauma . 1 II. Making Witness by “Making Generations” in Gayl Jones’s Corregidora . 29 Entrapped in a Legacy of Trauma . 30 A Way Out of Trauma . 51 A Path to Healing . 68 III. Righting/Writing the Past in Phyllis Alesia Perry’s Stigmata. 74 The Inheritance and Traces of Trauma . 77 The Language of the Body . 89 Recuperative Confrontation and Integration . 96 IV. Imaginative Bodies in Luisa Valenzuela’s Cambio de armas. 116 La Guerra sucia . 117 The Question of Genre . 122 “Cuarta versión” . 126 “De noche soy tu cabello”. 138 “Cambio de armas” . 142 CONCLUSION: The Reader’s Response in an Era of Trauma . 161 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 172 vii CHAPTER I Embodied Memories of Trauma The wounded body is sacred in some deep level of its existence; it is a body specialized and formed by experience; in its new way of being present to the world, the wounded body gains something not possessed before. Dennis Patrick Slattery Literature becomes a witness, and perhaps the only witness, to the crisis within history which precisely cannot be articulated. Shoshana Felman In light of the numerous and devastating wars, genocides, terrorist attacks, and state- sponsored terror campaigns that plagued the twentieth century and continue into the twenty- first century, it becomes increasingly vital to address the lasting psychological and often physical effects such events have on individuals as well as humanity collectively. The proliferation of literary narratives relating the impact of trauma emerging especially as a result of the Holocaust attests to trauma’s forceful effects on survivors, communities, nations, and culture.1 The articulation of trauma through literary art has become a significant way to 1The traumatic events of the Holocaust and the consequent literary narratives, testimonies, and critical analyses about this period of inhumanity have significantly informed my reading and analyses of the texts by the African American and Latin American writers I examine in this dissertation. The Holocaust and its aftermath raise significant issues regarding the recovery, representation, and transmission of traumatic memory. As a focal point for trauma studies, the Holocaust helps inform my understanding of institutionalized violence and oppression. For literary narratives and testimonies about the Holocaust see Elie Wiesel’s Night (1960), Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness (1969), Bogdan Wojdowski’s Bread for the Departed (1971), Danilo Kis’s Hourglass (1972), Janusz Korczak’s Ghetto Diary (1978), Sara Nomberg- Przytyk’s Auschwitz: True Tales from A Grotesque Land (1985), Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, My Father Bleeds History (1986), and Primo Levi’s The Drowned and The Saved (1986), and If This Is a Man and The Truce (1987). For critical analyses about the Holocaust and the subsequent difficulties in remembering, representing, and transmitting the experience and effects from it, see Lawrence Langer’s Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (1991), Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub’s Testimony: The Crises confront the lasting consequences of violent past experiences. As the manifestations of such trauma continue to unsettle and disturb society, it becomes necessary to understand how survivors and, by extension, nations cope and survive. The African American and Latin American texts that I examine in this dissertation directly confront the psychological, emotional, and physical trauma resulting from racial slavery in the United States and Brazil and state-sponsored terror in Argentina. All of the conflicts and the ensuing traumas I examine in these texts address the suppression of a national consciousness about the severity of the crimes committed against certain groups and individuals in the Americas—against Africans forced into slavery and the descendents of those enslaved, and against the victims of Argentina’s national conflict during la Guerra sucia (the Dirty War). By examining the role of the wounded and violated female bodies in the texts Corregidora (1975) by Gayl Jones, Stigmata (1998) by Phyllis Alesia Perry, and Cambio de armas (1982) by Luisa Valenzuela, I argue that these same bodies become the sites for healing from and integration of individual and collective traumatic experiences. The particular expressions of physical and psychological pain in these narratives simultaneously draw attention to the suffering individual that either inherits or directly lives through traumatic events and to the actual experience of such pain. Through the very encounter with their physical and psychological wounding, some of the female protagonists not only individually access and come to know their traumas, but they also transmit their stories to another, which is essential for integration of the past with the present self. Destruction and survival collide and begin to resolve the consequent tension between life and death. of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History (1992), Dominick LaCapra’s History and Memory after Auschwitz (1998) and Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory,