Abstract
AbstractLinguistic studies related to trauma are primarily interested in how traumatic events can be verbalized. This article, in contrast, focusses on ways of translating a traumatic experience into forms of symbolization that do not report on what happened but rather foreground the bodily and emotional sensations linked to (re)living such experiences. In discussing such forms of scenic presentation and condensation, I will build, inter alia, on Wittgenstein’s (1919/1997) distinction between saying and showing as well as on Langer’s (1948) distinction between discursive and presentational forms of meaning making. The close reading of a multimodal text authored by an eight-year-old schoolgirl in the context of a creative-writing activity allows us to identify poetic and artistic means that suggest a reading of the text as a ‘bottled message’ about intense feelings of fear and helplessness. In concluding I argue that Bruner’s (1986) dichotomous distinction between the paradigmatic and the narrative mode of meaning making needs to be extended by recognizing a third mode, which might be termed the presentational mode.
Highlights
At the core of this article is a child’s text consisting of written and drawn elements
Lorenzer (2006) claims that acknowledging and understanding such processes of identification that manifest themselves through the transference of feelings are the starting point for what he calls scenic understanding: an understanding that is less about a particular factual incident than a repeatedly reenacted interactional constellation
The starting point for my contribution was the difficulty of putting traumatic experiences into words
Summary
At the core of this article is a child’s text consisting of written and drawn elements. The presentational projection presents the components simultaneously: the meanings of particular elements that compose a larger, articulate symbol are understood only through the meaning of the whole, through their relations within the total structure This kind of non-discursive, condensing symbolization, such as may be characteristic of dreams or poetry, is in Langer’s understanding especially suitable for the expressions of what tends to defy linguistic projection, such as ‘the ambivalences and intricacies of inner experience, the interplay of feelings with thoughts and impressions, memories and echoes of memories, transient fantasy, or its mere runic traces, all turned into nameless, emotional stuff’ (Langer 1948: 82–83). Picture 3 shows a particular pictorial element that is absent in all the others: a sorrowful sun witnessing the scene from a distance and showing empathy
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