Fractured selves and haunted pasts: Reading Trauma through Caruth and Felman in Susan Sontag’s Debriefing (1978), Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind (1985), and Annie Proulx’s Postcards (1992).
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Date
2025-07-07
Authors
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou
Abstract
This dissertationisentitled FracturedSelvesandHauntedPasts:ReadingTraumathrough
CaruthandFelmaninDebriefing(1978),ALieoftheMind(1985),andPostcards(1992).
It exploreshowtraumaisportrayedinthenarrativesmentionedinthetitle,throughShoshana
Felman’sandCathyCaruth’stheoreticalframeworks.Itexamineshowtraumaaffectsboth
individuals andthepeoplearoundthem,showinghowthepainofapersoncanspreadthrough
his orherfamily,community,andsociety,andhowitdisturbstime,memory,andtheabilityto
speak. Allthreeworksshowtraumaassomethingthatisdifficulttodescribe,usuallysilenced.
The analysisdemonstratesthatcharactersarefrequentlymutedbytheboundariesoflanguage
and socialexpectations,andstaylockedbetweensurvivalanddestruction. A LieoftheMind
examinesfamilialbreakdown, Postcards examinesgenerationalguiltandsilence,and Debriefing
examinesnarrativedisintegration.Eachchapterfocusesonadistinctwaythattraumamanifests
itself. Thisstudyconcludesthatliteratureaimstopresenttraumaratherthantoresolveit,to
testifytotheunspeakableandtohighlightthemoralobligationoflistening.
Description
56p. ; (+CD-Rom)
Keywords
Trauma, witnessing, testimony, narrativefragmentation, privateandcollective trauma, theunspeakable, fracturedselves, hauntedpasts
Citation
Literature and interdisciplinary approaches