Russian Autofiction and Cultural Trauma(s)

Why Russians Should Not Read Sartre, or the Search For God In Two Extremities of Europe Yelena Mazour‐Matusevich “First I admired Dostoyevsky because of what he revealed to me about human nature, then I loved in Dostoyevsky the person who lived and expressed our historical destiny.”—A. Camus1 I do not know about you but French twentieth century literature puts me in a state of distress. Admiration and repulsion mingle strangely as I read. My admiration is for the witty work of art, the daring intellectual achievement, the twisted narrative behaving like an arrogant provocateur. The repulsion, on the other hand, comes with the “aftertaste,” as a hollow feeling inside. One cannot say it better than my beloved Camus: French literature is “exciting but deceiving.”2 Almost entirely negative, French modern literature is a work of destruction directed against its reader, whom writers seek to hurt, shake, insult, and humiliate. It is as if the grandeur and importance of a literary work were measured according to the strength of the shock it produces in the unsuspecting reader. Still, one thing appears particularly strange to me. The tormented writers who produced these dark and provocative pages created all this agitation by themselves alone, as if the authors had not lived in the blessed land of pleasant weather, excellent wine and deliciously smelly cheeses. The question is, why and how these French literary giants got to be so angry in such a nice climate. Or, in the simple terms of a Soviet‐born graduate student of French literature, “what’s their problem?” I propose that the answer to this puzzling question, which has tormented generations of French Literature’s foreign connoisseurs, lies in Russian literature, itself largely shaped by the French. In case you do not know, in the nineteenth century, French writers taught the Russian nobility and the intellectual elite many dangerous things, including a new literary genre, the novel. Russian soil turned out to be especially receptive to the import. Not even half a century later, talented indigenous apprentices presented the world with a new type of novel, the Russian novel, which, in turn, would have a great and lasting success in Europe in general, and in France in particular. French twentieth century literature can even be viewed as a response to the challenges set forth by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Roger Martin du Gard declared that the discovery of Tolstoy, whom he considered a master of masters, had the most enduring influence on his future as a novelist: “Compared to his vision, how our vision appears insufficient, superficial and conventional!”3 Andre Gide also regarded Dostoyevsky as the greatest of all novelists. Camus openly admitted that Russian literature shaped modern French writers to the larger extend than their national literature: “Our production, when worthwhile, can claim the paternity of Dostoyevsky rather than Tolstoy. There are big probabilities though that the real ambition of our writers consists, after the assimilation of The Possessed, in writing one day War and Peace.”4 However, regardless of all the admiration, Russian literature has also produced a sense of malaise in some disenchanted French souls. Russian writers used the new tool, the novel, for their own goals. The French malaise about Russian literature has been, once again, brilliantly expressed by Camus, the French Dostoyevsky (minus God and Orthodoxy): “In Dostoyevsky the introduction of the supplementary dimension, the spiritual one, is rooted in the notions of sin and holiness. But…these notions have been declared irrelevant by contemporary writers who retained from Dostoyevsky only the heritage of shadows.”5 Can one really agree with Camus that spirituality is merely a “supplementary dimension,” rather than a central one, in Dostoyevsky and by extension in Russian literature? To do so, would be to castrate the work. In the nineteenth century, the newly born Russian secular literature took upon itself the traditional moral mission, which the reforms of Peter the Great had deprived the Orthodox Church of a century earlier. While the Reforms of Peter the Great destroyed the Church’s leadership in society they left untouched the centuries long established hierarchy of values, and Russian secular literature, although clearly separated from and often opposed to the...

The particular ways in which theatre functions as a medium of cultural memory and trauma relief, have been widely debated over the years. This article outlines how theatrical master-narratives ‘working through’ cultural traumas are ‘productions’ of a dominant representational memory regime. The representational logic and the preconceived cathartic effect of Aristotle’s Poetics is foundational for this form of theatre memory. Its classical dramatic aesthetic founds tradition and safeguards continuity and identity at the cost of a-presentational modes of coping with traumas and at the cost of differential perspectives. These theatrical master-narratives ‘working through’ cultural traumas function in an inclusive as well as an exclusive way. \nWith Marketplace 76 Needcompany ‘narrates’ how a community deals with violence, catastrophe, loss, sadness and traumatic experiences in a very particular way. Instead of providing a unilateral master-narrative, the performance offers a kaleidoscope of sideway glances (Žižek) on violence and trauma. Jan Lauwers in that way moves beyond the strictures of a poetics of representation and inaugurates what I call an embodied poetics of failure. The postdramatic aesthetic of Marketplace 76 presents corporeal intensities that testify of the failure to fully comprehend or narrate a traumatic experience. In spite of their efforts, the characters do not ‘work through’ their traumatic past heroically. The performance does not entail a cathartic effect (Aristotle), but contains the potential to produce a shock to thought (Deleuze) that is expressive of so-called ‘inspeakable’ violent or traumatic events. Stuttering, stumbling, falling and vanishing bodies are in that sense the ‘bodies that matter’. This embodied poetics of failure also entails an ethical perspective; it dismantles the differential distribution of precarity at work in a unilateral master-narrative ‘working through’ cultural traumas.

This article aims to give an overview of literary instruction in schools of the russification era at the beginning of the 20th century in Estonia; this was likewise the curriculum of literary study offered to the generation of educated youth which included the Young Estonians. Based on official documents, archival materials, and memoirs, and through analyses of anthologies, literary histories, and teaching methods in use at the time, we attempt to reconstruct the outlines of literary reading and requirements for students in various types of schools. When, as a result of school reform, Russian became the language of instruction; lessons in Russian became central in the curriculum, alongside the word of God; selections from Russian literature were read in the original language. In the lower grades, teaching was by the so-called ”natural method”, intended to guarantee swift achievement of fluency in ”living Russian language”; this was later replaced by systematic textual analysis, which distinguished between belles lettres and other types of texts. However, the study of literature was always subordinated to the goals of language instruction. In institutions of secondary education, study of Russian literature was separate from language instruction. Indeed, Russian literature was the only literature systematically studied in high schools (though one must keep in mind that not all schools completely followed the official program.) Private schools were especially noticeable for their greater freedom, though all of them had to take general curriculum directives into account. Reading of literary texts connected with other languages thus had to remain almost purely illustrative. In view of the above, in the upper grades of elementary school and high school, students obtained a thorough introduction to the Russian classics. According to the official school curriculum, Russian literary history ended with Nikolai Gogol. Attempts were made to ignore more modern authors altogether (to the point of banning them – this applied especially to the works of Fjodor Dostojevski). However, a good command of Russian made it possible to read those works not approved by the school, and to keep abreast of more recent Russian literature. Young Estonians took conspicuous interest in turn-of-the-century Russian literary life. Over time the split between ”anthologized” and real Russian literature continued to deepen, as did the conflict between the works and their official interpretations in schoolbooks. This tendency coincided with processes of renewal in Estonian literature. In the interim, knowledge of classical Russian literature acquired in school remained at the level of passive coexistence in the culture, a kind of backdrop to newer undertakings. Thus it is interesting to note that articles on Aleksandr Pushkin published in the 1920s Estonian press were addressed to the reader assumed to be knowledgeable both about his works and his biography. Reminiscences of school in the memoirs of several Estonian authors serve as evidence that learning about Russian literature, particularly poetry, was perhaps their only bright memory of school in the russification era.

Euro-American exclusivity has mostly been responsible for eclipsing the universalizing appeal of trauma studies. In a bid to cater for trauma accounts of the Global South, the present study attempts to look into the trauma of people living in Kashmir, a conflict zone in the middle of the third-world Asian countries. Kashmir is one of the disputed regions and a center point of conflict between India and Pakistan since the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. The political turbulence as well as the resulting militarization has rendered the entire Kashmiri community listless and prone to traumatic experiences. Despite the serious nature of the traumatic experiences of the people living in Kashmir, and as depicted in the literature produced therein, little scholarly attention has been given to it to voice out these accounts, which are necessary for claiming the truthful depiction of the Kashmiris. This article uses Jeffery C. Alexander et al.’s Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity and Kai. T. Erikson’s Collective Trauma as the theoretical framework to analyze the selected Kashmiri Anglophone literary text titled The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed. The study finds that the traumatic memories of Kashmiri people, as a community, are no different from the likewise traumatized people of the Global North. Here, the Kashmiri narrative takes the responsibility of presenting the reality of life. The investigation concludes that fictional narratives, through memory of the past, bring a compelling tale of eternal suffering, establishing the fact that it is not the individual that must bear the moral responsibility; rather, it should be the collective.

This research correlates the oral history with the testimonial writings about the desaparecidos during the term of President Ferdinand Marcos,in 1965 and until the Arroyo administration in 2010. To establish the relationship between oral history and memorial texts, this phenomenological study gravitated around the discussion between cultural trauma—the objective projection of the horrible experiences of the victims and collective memory—the subjective representations of shared experiences among the surviving relatives of the desaparecidos. With oral history vis-à-vis testimonial works or cultural trauma vis-à-vis collective memory as the focal point of the paper’s discussion, the study established that cultural trauma and collective memory are linked because of the lived experiences of the families and friends of the desaparecidos. Moreover, cultural trauma expressed in oral history is processed through collective memory of the family and friends of desaparecidos who create memorial texts that help perpetuate the memory of the disappeared. This study recommends that researches problematizing the cultural trauma of the family and friends of desaparecidos be utilized as forum of ideas in order to sustain the collectivity as a force to reckon with so that no enforced disappearance ever happens again.

In this chapter we explore the American collective memory of the Vietnam War. Using the theory of cultural trauma, we elucidate the ways in which the memory of the war continues to impact American collective identity and the social processes through which this memory is constructed and maintained. Our central point is that collective memory exerts a powerful and continuous influence over how individuals and collectivities think and act. We argue that collective memory is represented and reproduced in narrative form through various modes of transmission, including oral telling, literature, music, drama, film, monuments, museum installations, and commemorative events. Through such media and related ritual practices, the stories and myths that congeal as collective memory serve as the foundation upon which collective identity rests, a collective identity that in the American case continues to be haunted by its defeat in Vietnam.

The Forgotten Apocalypse:Katherine Anne Porter's "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," Traumatic Memory, and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 David A. Davis (bio) As Katherine Anne Porter's short novel "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" opens, Miranda fitfully endures a vivid nightmare. She sees herself on horseback desperately racing from Death, the pale rider, who has already taken her grandfather, an aunt, a cousin, her "decrepit hound, and [her] silver kitten," and when he reaches her, she realizes that "he is no stranger to [her]" (270). Her nightmare tangles images of life and death with images of remembering and forgetting, and the relationship between survival and memory is a recurring motif in the story. Porter's allusion to the apocalyptic horseman described in Revelation proves to be appropriate because the story takes places during the influenza pandemic of 1918, the greatest public health catastrophe in modern history. The interplay between death and memory in "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" gives an aesthetic dimension to the pandemic's horrifying consequences and raises questions about literature as a form of traumatic memory. In the spring of 2009 fear of a swine flu pandemic and ongoing fear of a potential avian flu pandemic awakened dormant memories of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Global health officials mounted a campaign of contagion preparedness, and many officials still see another human pandemic as inevitable, if not imminent. To mitigate this potential disaster, scientists, epidemiologists, and government officials worldwide are looking [End Page 55] to the 1918 pandemic as a worst-case scenario as they develop contingency response plans. Before the emergence of the current virus, however, the 1918 influenza pandemic had largely disappeared from cultural memory. Few references to the 1918 pandemic exist in literature, popular culture, or even in history books, which makes Porter's story an important record of the outbreak. In the story, Miranda, a reporter for a Denver newspaper, enjoys a whirlwind romance with Adam Barclay, a young Army officer, until she collapses from the virus. Adam nurses her as she comes near to death, and while she recovers, he returns to his unit where he dies from the virus. Porter based "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" on her personal experience as an influenza survivor, and it is the most significant American literary work set during the pandemic. The novella illustrates the varieties of traumatic experience—personal trauma, cultural trauma, historical trauma, and aesthetic trauma. The story takes place in a unique and profound historical context, both because of Porter's personal traumatic experience and because memories of the pandemic have faded. "We Have Forgotten the Dead": Individual Trauma and Collective Memory In Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History, Cathy Caruth describes trauma as a "wound of the mind—the breach in the mind's experience of time, self, and the world—[that] is not, like a wound of the body, a simple and healable event, but rather an event that . . . is experienced too soon, too unexpectedly, to be fully known and is therefore not available to consciousness until it imposes itself again, repeatedly, in the nightmares and repetitive actions of the survivor" (4). Most trauma theorists locate trauma's impact in the individual memory, where the unsettling experience disrupts the victim's identity, but when a disruptive event affects a large population simultaneously, a collective trauma occurs. The influenza pandemic of 1918 complicates the distinction between individual trauma and collective trauma. One might stipulate that collective trauma merely consists of numerous individual traumas, but collective trauma amplifies the individual's experience by taxing the network of social resources that ordinarily stabilize the individual victim. Massive events such as wars, natural disasters, and pandemics have different dynamics than personal events such as crime, accidents, and illness.1 In both individual and collective forms of trauma, the event's impact lies not in the immediate experience but in the survivors' memory [End Page 56] of the event. Exploring the distinction between individual trauma and collective trauma leads to an explanation for how and why the pandemic has virtually disappeared from collective memory. Katherine Anne Porter survived the influenza pandemic of 1918. She worked for The Rocky Mountain News during the outbreak, and she contracted influenza as the...

Reviewed by: Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity Sean P. Hier Ron Eyerman , Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 302. There is an important distinction to be respected concerning the analytic fields which comprise "history" and "collective memory." Whereas the former delineates the terrain of the event, often recorded and reproduced in the form of institutionalized knowledge and symbolized by material artifacts and physical objects, the latter denotes the culmination of the spatially and temporally situated needs and desires of a generation, a negotiation of the present deriving from an engagement with the past. Material artifacts and physical objects, in other words, possess the potentiality to evoke a sense of the past, but it is the articulation of an assemblage of discourses which serve to grant temporal stability to what form those representations assume. Inspired by, and making good use of, discourse theory and the mediated generational character of cultural memory, Ron Eyerman invokes the notion of "cultural trauma" to exemplify the cultural memory of slavery in the imagination of the African American collective. Cultural trauma, Eyerman explains, is inherently representational by nature. Neither does it necessitate the direct experience of the members comprising the collective, nor does it in any final sense correspond to the beliefs and aspirations of an homogenous group. From Du Bois' narration of the "sorrow songs" to the discourses which comprise late 20th century film, the mediation of cultural trauma persists and continues to shape African American identity. In this emergent identity forged through trauma, slavery does not correspond to an experience, only to a point of origin. But it is that point of origin from which the formation of black identity in America has emerged. And it is against this alluring backdrop that Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity commences. In Eyerman's assessment, cultural trauma as it pertains to the formation of African American identity derives not so much from the experience but the experiential mediation of slavery. In the aftermath of American slavery, [End Page 317] reconstruction brought great anticipation for what the future promised to freed slaves. Educating children and establishing religious and educational institutions was paramount. From the sources of empowerment which persisted under conditions of servitude would emerge the future of the emancipated slave. Former slaves, in other words, were less focused on what was than what will be. The failure of reconstruction to deliver its promises of equality and acceptance signified the point at which the memory of slavery, cultural trauma, emerged as an important discursive resource for identity formation within the black collective. This of course neither implies a uniform process of identity building nor does it constitute essentialism. It does, however, draw attention to the argument that from the ashes of myriad ethnic distinctions — Ibo, Ashanti, Igba, etc. — emerged the social construction of blackness, race and, importantly, difference. Hence, the cultural trauma that was and remains slavery is, for Eyerman, the trauma of failed emancipation. Facilitated by the ascendance of an upwardly mobile, educated, black middle class comprised of charismatic intellectuals through the first half of the twentieth century — artists, writers, teachers, lawyers, journalists etc. — gaining control of black representation in a climate of a reactionary dominant society became paramount. Aided to a considerable extent by the expansion of the media of mass communications, Eyerman maintains that the question of how African peoples of the world should be represented has remained embedded in the popular consciousness of black intellectuals since the failed years of reconstruction. Through a fascinating exploration of art, music, literature, radio, television and film, Cultural Trauma probes the internal conflicts over the form and meaning of representation and culture in successive generations of black Americans after slavery. Drawing from Du Bois, Garvey, Washington, Hurston, McCall, Johnson, Frazier, Locke, Elijah Muhammad and more, Eyerman details the continuous conflict which saw the rise and fall of a Black public sphere. Engaging the diversity and complexity of the social movements that emerged in the aftermath of reconstruction through the acceleration of the New Negro, the Harlem Resistance, Black Nationalism and Civil Rights, as well as the role of...

This article explores Okinawa's ongoing status as a “sacrificial system,” wherein specific regions are exploited for national benefit, and the persistent challenges faced by Okinawans due to the disproportionate concentration of US military bases. The Battle of Okinawa is pivotal in understanding how collective memory shapes political identity, yet it remains largely a localized memory rather than part of Japan's national collective memory. This discrepancy is attributed to mainland Japan's selective memory politics, where the sacrifices of Okinawans have been marginalized to avoid challenging the narrative of postwar national identity. While memories such as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are institutionalized as symbols of national suffering, Okinawa's traumatic experience and anti‐base movement have largely been ignored. By analyzing the interplay between politics and collective memory, this study aims to highlight how Okinawa's experience has been shaped by systemic indifference and the political manipulation of memory, which has prevented its integration into Japan's broader national consciousness. This article argues that true peace and autonomy for Okinawa can be achieved only through recognizing its historical sacrifices at the national level and fostering solidarity across Japanese society. Ultimately, this research highlights the importance of integrating marginalized historical narratives into national memory to support democratic processes and collective identity in Japan.

Analyzed are collective identification processes that occur in conjunction with complicated, contradictory processes of glocalization, cultural exchange, emancipation of minorities, national liberation movements, etc. The paper aims to study the collective identity construction in the modern society, using the framework of cultural memory. Links between collective memory and collective identity are theoretically considered; the methodology of “imagined communities” is proposed to explore the collective memory as a resource of social integration. The article argues that the nation state is no longer the dominant basis for identity. Nowadays collectives require a shared memory of the past as the basis for social identity. The paper focuses on a high symbolic value of a remembering history, especially of a cultural trauma. The culturally constructed trauma can appear on the level of groups, and provide integration of community, based on victimization of the past. Thus, the collective traumatic memory can develop a negative collective identity, based on common traumatic experiences. Viewed from “imagined communities” perspective, social trauma is a part of politics of memory that becomes the politics of identity. Using results of sociological research, we distinguish three different versions of memorial paradigm, i.e. oblivion, displacement, and evocation. Such differentiation allows to argue that communities could manage their collective memory as a resource of social identification, and consequently integration.

The author analyzes memory as a constituting factor of individual and collective identities. Current threats to individual and collective memories is investigated in the context of new information and communication technologies. It is shown that the extension of the part of memory (mobile telephone, Internet) can be used for controlling human behavior and interfering in the content of individual me­mory. The interference in collective memory is made both with destruction of its storages (monuments, museums, texts, arts, "memory places" etc.) and changing its sense. The change of individual and collective memory means the change of individual and collective identities. The author studies relations between dif­ferent collective memories, as well as the relation between collective memory as an experienced tradition and historical knowledge (historical memory) as a result of the works of professional historians, trying to get objective knowledge about the past. It is shown that the work of an historian is influenced by values and ideo­logies which results in different understanding of the same events by different scholars. It is shown how this problem can be solved. The thesis about urgency of dialogues between an individual and collective memories, between different collective memories, between collective and historical memories, between dif­ferent historical memories is defended. The experience of the past determines the future. The memory conflicts lead to collision between people, countries, cultures

Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking is a trilogy of ideas obsessed with the experience and healing of trauma. Using the conventions of speculative fiction to probe the relationship between the language of choice and the experience of trauma, Ness frames his representation of Holocaust-like trauma through his depiction of the collective memory and governance of the Land (the planet's indigenous inhabitants). As a result, Chaos Walking differs from many realist historical novels for young people that focus their narrative energy upon trauma as an individual psychological disorder. The trilogy's growing interest in its final two volumes upon the place of traumatic memory in the mind of the sole indigenous survivor of what is repeatedly referred to as genocide enables Ness to ask contentious questions about the healing of trauma, and how individual trauma differs from cultural trauma.

The present survey aims to overview the criticism on the theory of cultural trauma, as well as to define the specific character of this theorem in the light of its critical judgement. Trauma studies, an interdisciplinary field of humanities has been successful for over two decades and this popularity manifests itself also in the very early emergence of severe criticism. The first wave of critics attacked especially the fact that Shoshana Felman’s and Cathy Caruth’s arguments regard the trauma as a metaphysical centre, as opposed to their point of origin in deconstruction. Because of this defect, Wulf Kansteiner, the fiercest critic considers even the use of the term cultural trauma an ethical delinquency. At this point, however, he himself can be criticised too: he fails to make any conceptual distinctions, based on which one could clearly distinguish between individual, psychic trauma and cultural traumas. In case of an individual trauma the medium is the body, the therapy is the representation, thus the traumatic experience becomes part of another medium. Mediality is an inevitable factor in the interpretation of any trauma, which we can also conclude when taking into consideration other context such as the theory of cultural memory or narratology. Therefore, I finally argue for the integration of the aspect of mediality into trauma-theory.

Russian literature appeared late in comparison to French literature and under the influence of the latter, but became very quickly an essential component of world literature, with many talented, original and influential writers. Nevertheless, throughout the 19th century, and until the October Revolution, it manifested, in the works and lives of its authors, what could be called an “obsession” with the West – Western Europe –, for which there was no real reciprocity in French literature. This “obsession” disappeared in the 20th century, during which at least two major changes happened in the relations between French and Russian literatures. The first one was due to the emergence of a Soviet literature defined according to Lenin’s wishes, and to the fascination that the Soviet project then exerted on many French intellectuals. The second major change started in the 1960’es, when Western intellectual re-evaluated the works produced by an official Soviet literature that no longer attracted them: it was judged provincial, conservative and dogmatic, while a more exciting “dissident” literature had appeared, was revealing a long hidden Soviet Russia and thus modifying permanently the relationship of French intellectuals, not only to Soviet literature, but also to Soviet-style communism.

Trauma is a haunted bridge between unfaceable memory and inexplicable reality. Memory, on the other hand, being rooted in past, cannot manifest itself in the present without triggering or recalling trauma. Theories of trauma and memory are interdependent, and one cannot be discussed without the other. Memory is always ‘postmemory,’ and trauma is always intergenerational, especially when it is connected with collective memory and collective trauma. Using the early Partition novels as a platform, this paper aims to examine how the Partition narratives address these issues of haunting memories of communal violence and mass migration. This paper will focus on the various aspects of social and cultural trauma and collective memory and will briefly discuss some major traits of trauma and memory theory to provide a theoretical background. The comprehensive theoretical framework will be put into perspective through the lenses of earlier novels on Partition, such as, Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar (1950), Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan (1956), Attia Hosain’s Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961), Manohar Malgonkar A bend in the Ganges (1964) Chaman Nahal’s Azadi (1975), Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981), and Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man (1988), to name a few. However, the textual discussion will be more reflective in nature than analytical in the sense that it will pose questions and open a potential array of critical discussion instead of offering a traditional method of critical analysis of the selected novels.