The “Unclaimed Experience”: Trauma and Crime Fiction

Abstract

This paper examines the intersections between trauma and literature and crime fiction, more specifically. By looking at the representations of trauma in crime fiction, it is argued here that trauma in crime novels involves a multilayered and complex discourse that generates its own narrative, one that relies on techniques like fragmentation, repetition, puzzle-solving, deliberate vagueness, and obscurity. It is also proposed that the use of trauma as a lens to examine crime narratives is both valuable and problematic, as it brings forth the conflict and the tension in the trauma discourse regarding words and wounds; expression and silence; representation and unspeakability. This paper will highlight that exploring the meeting points between trauma and crime narratives can also function as a as a point of departure from the conventional readings of crime fiction and contemplates a reading of the crime novel as trauma fiction. By so doing, this paper stresses the configurations of trauma in crime fiction beyond the medical framework and addresses the aspects and techniques in which trauma is centrally positioned in crime narratives.