The phenomenon of traumatic writing (“Life after 4.30 pm” by Olexandr Tereshchenko)

Abstract

The subject of research in this article is traumatic writing. The study of trauma writing in modern Ukrainian literature is one of the most pressing issues, because today we have a large body of works of art and documentaries dedicated to the war in the East. The aim of the study is to analyze the peculiarities of traumatic writing in the story “Life after 16:30” by Oleksandr Tereshchenko, a participant in the defense of Donetsk airport. Traumatic writing is interpreted in the context of the ideas of Cathy Caruth, J. Lacan, J. Derrida. S. Freud. The analysis also includes the concepts of autobiographical writing, in particular, the ideas of R. Barthes and I. Konstankevych. The leading method of research was the method of close reading. Conceptual images related to the author's trauma and traumatic experience were identified. These include images of pain, memory, feat, life, body, wound, laughter, and fear. The results of the research prove that in Oleksandr Tereshchenko's story writing is a psychotherapeutic gesture, which is embodied in the following features: writing as an act of corporal / physical, special muscular movement that unites the author with previous life, before trauma; drawing and writing as a type of creativity and part of psychotherapy; archiving and decoding of symbolic meanings related to trauma; poetic addressing and the formation of a community of trauma. The article proposes a wording for this type of writing: fluent autobiographical writing. This is a special type of writing, which arises as a consequence of understanding the trauma and post-traumatic syndrome, the key biographeme (R. Barthes) in it is an episode of trauma, the leading speech act — an attempt to express the author's feelings, memories of trauma, life after trauma. Such writing is characterized by symbolization of trauma, fragmentation, self-narration, internal dialogue with oneself or an imaginary interlocutor, constant correlation of events and thoughts within the pairs “I — Other”, “I — Others”, “I — Another society”, “I — Past” and so on. The scientific novelty and practical significance of the article are due to the fact that in this article on the example of the story “Life after 16:30” by Olexandr Tereshchenko it is proved that the biographeme “trauma” in such a letter unfolds in discourses: life before trauma; actually a traumatic event; comprehension (including an ironic attitude) to trauma-injury; traumatic existence in the process of recovery and after recovery; childhood, a time when a person knows nothing about a possible traumatic experience; writing as a way to release from injury.