Trauma and Literature in an Age of Globalization

Description

While globalization is often associated with economic and social progress, it has also brought new forms of terrorism, permanent states of emergency, demographic displacement, climate change, and other "natural" disasters. Given these contemporary concerns, one might also view the current time as an age of traumatism. Yet what—or how—does the traumatic event mean in an age of global catastrophe? This volume explores trauma theory in an age of globalization by means of the practice of comparative literature. The essays and interviews in this volume ask how literary studies and the literary anticipate, imagine, or theorize the current global climate, especially in an age when the links between violence, amorphous traumatic events, and economic concerns are felt increasingly in everyday experience. Trauma and Literature in an Age of Globalization turns a literary perspective upon the most urgent issues of globalization—problems of borders, language, inequality, and institutionalized violence—and considers from a variety of perspectives how such events impact our lived experience and its representation in language and literature. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of contents List of Figures Introduction Note Works Cited Part I Trauma, Deconstruction, and Global Relations 1 Globalization and the Theory of Trauma: A Conversation with Cathy Caruth Translations of “Trauma” The Death Drive Political Action and Collective Experience Trauma and Globalization Notes Works Cited 2 The Cut that Links: Paracomparatism in Caruth and Danticat Paracomparatisms (Comparative Literature ca. 1995) The Displacement of Comparison (“Comparative Literature” ca. 1996) The Cut that Links (Comparative Literacy ca. 1937/1998) Notes Works Cited 3 Common Catastrophes: or, Personification Reconsidered Catastrophes for the Commons Personification and the Everyday Contagious Effects Earth’s Human Shores Note Works Cited 4 Fugitive Sovereignties in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy: Deconstructing the “Unparalleled Catastrophe” of the Human Notes Works Cited Part II Politics and Literature 5 The Foreign Body in Psychoanalysis and Politics: A Conversation with Elissa Marder Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction Globalization and Politics Politics and Action Notes Works Cited 6 Reverberations: Traumatic Histories, Cultural Difference, and the Drama of Listening in Eileen Chang’s Yuannü and The Rouge of the North The Story of a Woman and a History of Rewriting The Scene of Address and the Drama of Listening Notes Works Cited 7 Some Iterations of Blood I II Note Works Cited 8 “How Very Godfather Part II of You”: Trauma and Intertextual Comparison in A Brief History of Seven Killings Intertext as Connective Tissue Between Intertexts Note Works Cited 9 Framing the World: Texts that Circulate and People Who Cannot Circulating Frames Circulating Texts and Shrinking Borders Framing Atrocity Notes Works Cited Part III Literature and Human Rights 10 Literature, the Humanities, and Political Action: A Conversation with Elisabeth Weber Notes Works Cited 11 Killing Dogs: Animality and Trauma in Waltz with Bashir and Deogratias Killing Dogs “Give us Boaz Rein’s head” Cockroaches and Stars The Global Graphic Novel and the Cosmic Dung Beetle Notes Works Cited 12 Flood Poetics: Nigeria, New Orleans, and Os.undare’s City Without People Omiyale Crossings of Memory Disaster of Solutions What Makes a Place? Local Poem, Global Age Traumatic Resurfacings Lost Archive: Beginning from Erasure Abandonment in Common “Enterprise Zone”: Necropoiesis “Water Never Forgets”: Namesake Notes Works Cited 13 Phantom Work: Refugees, Antigone, Comparative Literature The Media Performance of Tragedy and Phantom Figures The Economic Crisis The Refugee Crisis Tragedy and Hidden Bodies Notes Works Cited 14 Rights, Politics, and Engagement: A Conversation with Thomas Keenan Notes Works Cited Contributors Index