The Splintered Glass: Facets of Trauma in the Post-Colony and Beyond

Description

These essays discuss trauma studies as refracted through literature, focusing on the many ways in which the terms 'cultural trauma' and 'personal trauma' intertwine in postcolonial fiction. In a catastrophic age such as the present, trauma itself may serve to provide linkage through cross-cultural understanding and new forms of community. Western colonization needs to be theorized in terms of the infliction of collective trauma, and the postcolonial process is itself a post-traumatic cultural formation and condition. Moreover, the West's claim on trauma studies (via the Holocaust) needs to be put in a perspective recuperating other, non-Western experiences. Geo-historical areas covered include Africa (genital alteration) and, more specifically, South Africa (apartheid), the Caribbean (racial and gendered violence in Trinidad; the trauma of Haiti), and Asia (total war in the Philippines; ethnic violence in India compared to 9/11). Special attention is devoted to Australia (Aboriginal and multicultural aspects of traumatic experience) and New Zealand (the Maori Battalion). Writers treated include J.M. Coetzee, Shani Mootoo, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Flanagan, Janette Turner Hospital, Andrew McGahan, Tim Winton, and Patricia Grace. Illuminating insights are provided by creative writers (Merlinda Bobis and Meena Alexander). Contributors: Meena Alexander, Heinz Antor, Bárbara Arizti, Merlinda Bobis, Donna Coates, Marc Delrez, Maite Escudero, Isabel Fraile, Aitor Ibarrola-Armendáriz, Susana Onega, Chantal Zabus. The Splintered Glass: Facets of Trauma in the Post-Colony and Beyond Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction FROM OFFICIAL HISTORY TO INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE TRAUMA Broken Memories of a Traumatic Past and the Redemptive Power of Narrative in the Fiction of Edwidge Danticat “When the World is Free”: Traumatized Soldiers in Patricia Grace’s Second World War Novel Tu Passion to Pasyon: Playing Militarism Poetics of Dislocation: Trauma, Language, Memory WOMEN AND CULTURAL/COLONIAL TRAUMA Trauma, Madness, and the Ethics of Narration in J.M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country “Softer than Cotton, Stronger than Steel”: Metaphor and Trauma in Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night Haunting Wounds: Genital Alterations, Autobiography, and Trauma THE AUSTRALIAN APOLOGY AND TRAUMA OF UNBELONGING Personal Trauma/Historical Trauma in Tim Winton’s Dirt Music “Twisted Ghosts”: Settler Envy and Historical Resolution in Andrew McGahan’s The White Earth The Trauma of Immigration and the Ethics of Self-Positioning in Richard Flanagan’s The Sound of One Hand Clapping Inside Out in the Land Down Under: Reading Trauma through Janette Turner Hospital’s Oyster Notes on Contributors Index