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12 pages, 1574 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Listing the Body: Embodied Experience and Identity in Autobiographical Graphic Illness Narratives

by Nancy Pedri

Humanities 2024, 13(2), 40; https://doi.org/10.3390/h13020040 - 26 Feb 2024

Viewed by 1397

“Listing the Body: Embodied Experience and Identity in Autobiographical Graphic Illness Narratives” examines the popular use of lists in autobiographical graphic illness narratives to determine how they are used to address the subject’s embodied experience of illness. After a brief discussion of what [...] Read more.

“Listing the Body: Embodied Experience and Identity in Autobiographical Graphic Illness Narratives” examines the popular use of lists in autobiographical graphic illness narratives to determine how they are used to address the subject’s embodied experience of illness. After a brief discussion of what lists are and how they have been said to function in literary texts, attention is given to examining how the verbal and visual lists included in several autobiographical graphic illness narratives narrate identity as understood across the body, in the mind of the self, and in the mind of others. Asking how lists function within autobiographical graphic illness narratives to address the ill subject’s fluctuating understanding of self as an embodied being, the article concludes that lists narrate the subject’s lived experience of illness. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Trauma, Ethics & Illness in Contemporary Literature and Culture)

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12 pages, 250 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Healing with the Nonhuman Actor: A Study of the Recuperation from Loneliness and Isolation Caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic through the Cinematic Text Lars and the Real Girl

by Shipra Tholia

Humanities 2023, 12(3), 41; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12030041 - 23 May 2023

Viewed by 3733

Abstract

Loneliness and isolation were two factors introduced as “effective measures” during the COVID-19 crisis. The lockdown exacerbated loneliness among those already suffering from acute illnesses. In this context, a rereading of the film Lars and the Real Girl by Craig Gillespie is particularly [...] Read more.

Loneliness and isolation were two factors introduced as “effective measures” during the COVID-19 crisis. The lockdown exacerbated loneliness among those already suffering from acute illnesses. In this context, a rereading of the film Lars and the Real Girl by Craig Gillespie is particularly relevant as it offers novel perspectives on loneliness. The interplay between Lars’s desire to be in a compassionate relationship and the fear of meeting and socializing is comparable to what was witnessed across the coronavirus-afflicted world. This paper explores the potential for understanding delusion caused by traumatic experiences as a form of communication rather than a mental disorder. The film explains how a silicone sex doll functions as a medium between the lonesome Lars and society in resolving the trauma. The paper focuses on the infantile nature of humans and uses infantilism in a conducive manner to understand anthropomorphism for bridging the gap between a lonely/delusional person and society while drawing examples from the film. The introduction of a nonhuman actor—an anatomically correct doll—becomes an opportunity for a traumatized person such as Lars to know himself well and gradually open up to socializing. As he moves from external to threshold en-rolling, followed by internal en-rolling, it indicates his opening up to communication as he moves from language to lalangue and creates his world with the doll. This film presents a therapeutic approach to treating schizoid personality disorder with the assistance of a nonhuman actor. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Trauma, Ethics & Illness in Contemporary Literature and Culture)

20 pages, 300 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Making Bedlam: Toward a Trauma-Informed Mad Feminist Literary Theory and Praxis

by Jessica Lowell Mason

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020024 - 9 Mar 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2497

Abstract

Building on what Margaret Price describes as the “long history of positive and person-centered discourses” of the term Mad, this article seeks to offer a (re)tooling and (re)theorization of the not-so-antiquated concept of “bedlam” as part of a Mad feminist literary theory and [...] Read more.

Building on what Margaret Price describes as the “long history of positive and person-centered discourses” of the term Mad, this article seeks to offer a (re)tooling and (re)theorization of the not-so-antiquated concept of “bedlam” as part of a Mad feminist literary theory and practice that aims to situate reading and writing practices on the subject of madness within a trauma-informed Mad framework and to (re)shape reading and writing practices by (re)seeing or seeing-in-a-new-and-old-Mad way the concept of “bedlam”—rendering it agential and unhinging it from its historical meanings. The article theorizes “bedlam” as a form of deliberate Mad literary practice, offering two examples of “bedlam-making”, one in the poetry of Anne Sexton’s 1960 collection To Bedlam and Part-way Back and the other in the historical fiction of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The article strives to re-articulate “bedlam” in a way that draws attention to the agency of language on the subject of madness, when written and read by writers and readers aware of the acute violences and traumas performed upon bodies exiled from “Reason”, attending to the ways in which writers and readers make a subjectivity of “bedlam” or a resistance to and critique of systemic oppression that gives social agency to Mad literary action. “Making bedlam”, it is argued in this essay, is a Mad feminist literary theory and practice, part of social justice discourses and liberation-focused action, which is deeply connected with other liberation movements in pursuit of the end of systemic violences. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Trauma, Ethics & Illness in Contemporary Literature and Culture)

11 pages, 238 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Foreshortened Future and the Trauma of a Dying Earth in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet

by Amar Singh

Humanities 2023, 12(2), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020022 - 25 Feb 2023

Viewed by 2966

Abstract

An experience of anxiety is caused by the anticipation of unseen future events, especially in the context of ecological trauma, where the prospect of a world without humans in the distant future is often portrayed through mediated cinematic memories. As a result of [...] Read more.

An experience of anxiety is caused by the anticipation of unseen future events, especially in the context of ecological trauma, where the prospect of a world without humans in the distant future is often portrayed through mediated cinematic memories. As a result of anthropological intervention on our planet, it is feared that humanity will cease to exist unless steps are taken to prevent it. Furthermore, as climate change intensifies, humans are left with more questions regarding their future. One recent film that addresses this issue is Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020). The film explores the concept of a dying Earth in the future, whose inhabitants seek help from the past to restore the planet’s balance by reversing entropy. Despite failing to provide any remedy by revealing ‘What’s happened happened’, a viewpoint that Christopher Nolan, as an auteur, has already presented in his previous film Interstellar (2014), the film leaves the audience with the question, what is the purpose of projecting an unseen trauma? By evaluating the events that contributed to the image of a crumbling Earth in the film, this paper seeks to examine the concept of future trauma as an indication of post-traumatic stress disorder while simultaneously exploring it as a film that acknowledges Nolan’s own anxiety over the decline of a medium he cherishes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Trauma, Ethics & Illness in Contemporary Literature and Culture)

13 pages, 305 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Clenched and Empty Fists: Trauma and Resistance Ethics in Han Kang’s Fiction

by Shannon Finck

Humanities 2022, 11(6), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11060149 - 5 Dec 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2697

Abstract

Broadly speaking, the literary history of human–nonhuman metamorphoses conveys certain ethics regarding human-to-human relations by mediating these relations through metaphors of inhumanity. Where such transformations appear in the literature of the present, however, the human is often decentered, fostering an uneasy consort between [...] Read more.

Broadly speaking, the literary history of human–nonhuman metamorphoses conveys certain ethics regarding human-to-human relations by mediating these relations through metaphors of inhumanity. Where such transformations appear in the literature of the present, however, the human is often decentered, fostering an uneasy consort between human and nonhuman beings and ways of being. Taking the fiction of South Korean author, Han Kang, as a case study, this essay examines the political or civic value of reinvigorating vegetal or arboreal transformation in contemporary stories that unfold against a backdrop of global climate change and ecological collapse. I argue that Han’s work depicts the mimicry of or engagement with nonhuman forms of life as both passive strategies for resisting human acts of violence and exploitation and alternative models of sociality and care. Drawing especially on the unruliness of plants and non-animal organic matter, Han’s translated works invite readers to consider what human subjects can learn about both individual and networked, interspecies modes of protest from green subjectivity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Trauma, Ethics & Illness in Contemporary Literature and Culture)

10 pages, 260 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Trauma, Diasporic Consciousness, and Ethics in Nicole Krauss’s Forest Dark

by Tiasa Bal and Gurumurthy Neelakantan

Humanities 2022, 11(6), 148; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11060148 - 3 Dec 2022

Viewed by 1988

Abstract

Dislocation, expatriation, and the attendant loss of homeland are concerns at the heart of Jewish literature. The dialectical relationship between identity and the sense of homeland informing the Jewish diasporic consciousness, in particular, has often culminated in nostalgic depictions of Israel in post-war [...] Read more.

Dislocation, expatriation, and the attendant loss of homeland are concerns at the heart of Jewish literature. The dialectical relationship between identity and the sense of homeland informing the Jewish diasporic consciousness, in particular, has often culminated in nostalgic depictions of Israel in post-war American Jewish literature. In focusing on such a literary representation, this essay unravels the multidimensionality of diasporic Jewish identity. Critically analyzing Nicole Krauss’s Forest Dark (2017), it evaluates the trauma of exile and the psychic dilemma of third-generation American Jewish writers. The novelist brings about a confluence of nostos and nostalgia in Forest Dark. In evoking the visceral sense of loss, dislocation, and a painful yearning for the lost homeland, the author succeeds in tracing the lives of two protagonists, Jules Epstein, a retired New York lawyer, and Nicole, a Jewish American novelist struggling with a deep marital crisis. The text foregrounds the theme of self-discovery exemplified in the homecoming of its two central characters. Following his parents’ death and haunted by the anguish and horror of the Shoah, Jules unmoors himself from his current life and flies to Tel Aviv on a whim. Nicole, who suffers from creative blockage on account of her failing marriage, undertakes the trip to Tel Aviv hoping to recover from her soul-sickness, as it were. If Jules and Nicole do not cross paths, it still remains that their Jewish identities stem from the originary tragedy of the Holocaust. Although removed from the horrific sights and scenes of the tragic event, intergenerational trauma resonates with certain aspects of the diasporic Jewish existence. Using theoretical interventions of memory studies and the Freudian concept of Unheimlich or the uncanny, this essay explores the ethical implications that undergird Nicole Krauss’s diasporic depiction of Israel. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Trauma, Ethics & Illness in Contemporary Literature and Culture)

11 pages, 271 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Caring for Everything Inside: Migrant Trauma and Danticat’s Narrative Bigidi

by Jay Rajiva

Humanities 2022, 11(6), 139; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11060139 - 7 Nov 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1932

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, in short stories from her most recent collection, Everything Inside (2019), challenges toxic forms of representation by attending to the imaginative potential of Haitian migrant experience within moments of collective trauma. This challenge, [...] Read more.

In this essay, I argue that Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, in short stories from her most recent collection, Everything Inside (2019), challenges toxic forms of representation by attending to the imaginative potential of Haitian migrant experience within moments of collective trauma. This challenge, I suggest, is based on bigidi, a Creole expression denoting permanent imbalance that is once philosophy, dance practice, musical aesthetic, and cultural tradition. The principle of being off-balance without falling, central to how bigidi finds expression in Guadeloupean swaré-lé-woz and other forms of Caribbean dance, interweaves rhythm, music, and bodily movement with a community-oriented site of cultural expression. By saturating the narrative and readerly spaces of Everything Inside with uniquely Caribbean elements of improvisation, audience interaction, and performance, Danticat foregrounds moments of shared intimacy and vulnerability between Haitians, disrupting the representational trauma circuit of migrant death. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Trauma, Ethics & Illness in Contemporary Literature and Culture)

13 pages, 259 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Tove Ditlevsen’s Witness of Trauma as a Source of Hope

by Julie K. Allen

Humanities 2022, 11(5), 122; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11050122 - 26 Sep 2022

Viewed by 3102

Abstract

The defining life experience of the Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen (1917–1976) was domestic trauma, both externally- and self-inflicted. Born at the end of the first World War amid an economic depression, Ditlevsen grew up in a hardscrabble working-class neighborhood of Copenhagen, lived through [...] Read more.

The defining life experience of the Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen (1917–1976) was domestic trauma, both externally- and self-inflicted. Born at the end of the first World War amid an economic depression, Ditlevsen grew up in a hardscrabble working-class neighborhood of Copenhagen, lived through the Nazi occupation of her country during World War II, cycled through unhealthy sexual relationships, underwent illegal abortions and unnecessary surgeries, suffered from depression and prescription drug addiction, and died by suicide at the age of fifty-eight. Instead of repressing or denying her traumatic experiences, however, Ditlevsen chose to confront, reinscribe, and transform them in her literary texts, finding and offering hope that exposing secrets to public scrutiny can lead to acceptance and healing. In her searingly candid poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs, Ditlevsen exemplifies the efficacy of working through trauma: she confronts the fraught choices and abusive relationships by which her life was shaped candidly and unapologetically as an act of survival. In the process of bearing witness on the printed page to domestic trauma and its consequences, Ditlevsen models the vital role of literature, for both readers and writers, in documenting, processing, and overcoming traumatic experiences. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Trauma, Ethics & Illness in Contemporary Literature and Culture)

16 pages, 311 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Imagining the Blitz and Its Aftermath: The Narrative Performance of Trauma in Sarah Waters’s The Night Watch

by Susana Onega

Humanities 2022, 11(2), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11020057 - 14 Apr 2022

Viewed by 3513

Abstract

Critics agree that Sarah Waters’ fourth novel, The Night Watch (2006), marks a turn in her fiction, away from the farcical tone of her first three neo-Victorian novels and towards an ever-more serious concern with the changes in class structures and gender roles [...] Read more.

Critics agree that Sarah Waters’ fourth novel, The Night Watch (2006), marks a turn in her fiction, away from the farcical tone of her first three neo-Victorian novels and towards an ever-more serious concern with the changes in class structures and gender roles brought about by the fact of war. The novel tells the parallel stories of three women and one man living in various areas of London in the 1940s. Though they have different social status, ideology, and sexual orientation, they share similarly traumatic experiences as, together with war trauma, they harbour individual feelings of loss and/or shame related to their deviance from patriarchal norms. The article seeks to demonstrate that the palimpsestic and backward structure of the novel performs formally the ‘belatedness of trauma’ (Caruth 1995, pp. 4–5), in an attempt to respond aesthetically and ethically to the ‘mnemonic void’ (Freud [1014] 1950) or ‘black hole’ (Pitman and Orr 1990; Bloom 2010; Van der Kolk and McFarlane [1998] 2004) left both in the characters’ traumatised psyches and in our cultural memory of the 1940s by the erased memories of the decade’s non-normative or dissident others. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Trauma, Ethics & Illness in Contemporary Literature and Culture)

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