Abstract
Little has been said in trauma studies about the ability or inability of traumatized characters de-picted by traumatized writers to recover accounts of self from the aseptic reiterations of a language unable to articulate the unspeakable event of trauma. This paper argues that Cathy Caruth’s recent emphasis upon a “language of ashes”—derived from a “language of the life drive” departing from a “language of the death drive”—provides a framework for examining the extent to which traumatized textualities are able to apprehend their seeming enervating repetitions of the death drive as textual constructs able to be written on and read. I posit that the literary characters in the fictions of Ingeborg Bachmann and W. G. Sebald occupy opposing ends of the ambit of the life and death drives, and aver that the contrasting ways they perform the repetitiveness of personal and/or national trauma come close to enacting, respectively, the languages of the “death drive” and the “life drive”. I demonstrate the extent to which they are able to extricate the language used from their singular historical experiences of trauma. In this way, I argue that Caruth’s attempt to identify the site within history where trauma can be creatively animated sets a productive framework for examining how trauma can either metabolize an individual into foreclosing the world, or create a continuing dialogue with loss for the unfolding of a world-in-becoming.
Highlights
Recent representations of traumatic memories in cultural analysis, identity politics, medical discourse and literary studies have displayed a proclivity toward texts able to transmit the experience of trauma directly to read-How to cite this paper: Ong, K. (2014)
Less has been said about the ability or inability of traumatized characters, depicted by traumatized writers, to recover accounts of self from the aseptic reiterations of a language unable to articulate the unspeakable event of trauma
This paper argues that Cathy Caruth’s recent emphasis of a “language of the life drive” departing from a “language of the death drive” provides a framework for examining the extent to which traumatized textualities are able to apprehend and seize themselves and their seeming enervating repetitions of the death drive as textual constructs able to be written on and be read
Summary
Recent representations of traumatic memories in cultural analysis, identity politics, medical discourse and literary studies have displayed a proclivity toward texts able to transmit the experience of trauma directly to read-. Traumatized Textualities Performing Trauma “Trauma” has come to designate the expressive limit caused by an event so life-threatening it displaces preconceived notions of the world in intolerable ways Trauma studies, in their aim to illuminate a range of scarring experiences of aggression such as rape, abuse and incarceration, have demonstrated a tendency to turn toward literary texts that represent trauma as a way to reckon with, work through, and understand traumatic history and the altered architecture of memory the traumatized experience. In their aim to illuminate a range of scarring experiences of aggression such as rape, abuse and incarceration, have demonstrated a tendency to turn toward literary texts that represent trauma as a way to reckon with, work through, and understand traumatic history and the altered architecture of memory the traumatized experience This observed proclivity could be viewed as incongruous, as it implies literature’s ability to express what has already been acknowledged is inexpressible. While her recent Literature in the Ashes of History (2013) addresses traumatic textualities that enact traumatic knowledge as opposed to directly representing it, she attempts a meaningful and unprecedented move in trauma studies by trying to identify the site within history where trauma can be worked through or narrated instead
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