Mapping Generations of Traumatic Memory in American Narratives

Description

This volume collects work by several European, North American, and Australian academics who are interested in examining the performance and transmission of post-traumatic memory in the contemporary United States. The contributors depart from the interpretation of trauma as a unique exceptional event that shatters all systems of representation, as seen in the writing of early trauma theorists like Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, and Dominick LaCapra. Rather, the chapters in this collection are in conversation with more recent readings of trauma such as Michael Rothberg's multidirectional memory (2009), the role of mediation and remediation in the dynamics of cultural memory (Astrid Erll, 2012; Aleida Assman, 2011), and Stef Craps' focus on postcolonial witnessing and its cross-cultural dimension (2013).The corpus of post-traumatic narratives under discussion includes fiction, diaries, memoirs, films, visual narratives, and oral testimonies. A complicated dialogue between various and sometimes conflicting narratives is thus generated and examined along four main lines in this volume: trauma in the context of multidirectional memory; the representation of trauma in autobiographical texts; the dynamic of public forms of national commemoration; and the problematic instantiation of 9/11 as a traumatic landmark. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION PART ONE WHEN THE HOLOCAUST COMES TO HARLEM NEGOTIATING TRAUMASVIA CROSS-CULTURAL URBAN IDENTITYCONFIGURATIONS OUT OF GRIEF “STALINTOWNS APLENTY” CAST IN STONE CREATING A NEO-HOODOOMYTHOLOGY PART TWO FROM “ANGEL OF MERCY”TO “RADICALMUSLIM” PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE TRAUMASOFMUTILATION AND JAMES ELLROY’SLOS ANGELES THE AFTER-LIFE OF IMAGES THE TRANSGRESSIVE MOURNERIN JOAN DIDION’S THE YEAR OF MAGICALTHINKING (2005) AND BLUE NIGHTS (2011),AND JOYCE CAROL OATES’SAWIDOW’S STORY (2011) PART THREE CONTEMPORARY WARMEMORIALSAND THE URBAN LANDSCAPE THE GENDERED APPROACH PROSTHETICMEMORIESOF FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT’S INFANTILEPARALYSIS AS NARRATIVE EMBODIMENTSFOR TRAUMATIC AMERICANWARMEMORY PART FOUR HEALING THE NATION,MEMORIALIZING TRAUMA WRITING POST-TRAUMATIC MEMORIES,WRITING THE CITY THE SPECTATOR-SURVIVOR ARTICULATION AND EVASION GENDER AND THE NOSTALGIC BODYIN POST-9/11 FICTION CONTRIBUTORS INDEX