The Translator as a Traumatized Protagonist in Inaam Kachachi’s The American Granddaughter

Abstract

Ever since the publication of Cathy Caruth’s articles and books on trauma in the 1990s, Western literary circles have witnessed an interest in literary trauma studies. Trauma studies have gradually connected psychology, in an interdisciplinary manner, to other cultural and scientific aspects like postmodernism, postcolonialism, history and translation studies. This paper argues that the trauma resulting from both indigenous dictatorship and colonial war on Iraq has created national as well as individual fragmentation. From the prominent Iraqi writers writing on Trauma is Inaam Kachachi with her postmodernist take The American Granddaughter. This is examined in the story of Zeina Behnam, the American/Iraqi translator for the American Army during the Second Gulf War who is argued to be a dissociative personality due to trauma. It is a story that does not give the readers the relief of taking sides or the clarity of a one-sided vision. The paper follows a qualitative method based roughly on, analysis (of psychological texts and the primary text) and ethnographical search of the main character’s subtly told history.