The ethics and aesthetics of representing trauma: The textual politics of Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker

Abstract

The increasing prominence of trauma theory in literary analysis since the 1990s has led some critics to revise notions of the relationship between reader and text. This is not simply because trauma theory invites the reader’s ethical engagement with the text; these theories also re‐evaluate the relationship of reader to text by conceptualizing the text as a “witness” to trauma. This essay explores the political ramifications of such a model with reference to The Dew Breaker (2004) by Haitian‐born US immigrant writer Edwidge Danticat. This text depicts the figure of “the Dew Breaker” (a Tonton Macoute and torturer, of François Duvalier’s regime) and the people directly and indirectly affected by his legacy of terror in Haiti and the United States. The construction of Danticat’s text challenges any notion that the reader can unambiguously witness trauma or empathize with the characters. It enables a critique of literary analyses which see traumatic experiences as available for assimilation into a model of “testifying” text. Furthermore, reading The Dew Breaker as trauma fiction reveals how celebratory notions of audience empathy can overlook the fact that reading fiction is not necessarily an engaged political intervention.