Depiction Of Trauma Research Articles

Representation of Traumatic Memory in the Film Drishyam: A Barthesian Reading

Cinema has long served as a vital medium for disseminating information and knowledge in modern society. Its portrayal of diverse emotions and themes often mirrors societal events in a realistic and compelling manner. Enhanced by various cinematographic techniques, the depiction of trauma is magnified within the visual narrative. This article employs “Drishyam”, a Malayalam film presented in two parts, to analyze the impact of trauma stemming from a singular event. It explores the process of trauma across different phases and examines its repercussions on the individual, family, and local community. The theoretical frameworks of Camera Lucida and Camera Obscura, as proposed by Roland Barthes, provide a basis for interpretation, allowing for the cinematic narrative to be examined from multiple perspectives, as well as highlighting the directorial intent. In particular, this study utilizes Barthes’ concepts of “studium” and “punctum” to evaluate the emotional response elicited from the audience.

Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent: A Contemporary Remap of Women’s Identity

Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent is a contemporary feminist text that sheds light on various perceptions, such as women’s identity, trauma, and social misogyny, through the appropriation of historical fiction. This study investigates the text through the lenses of genre theory, feminism, and trauma theory. It demonstrates that the novel faithfully represents a Victorian setting while remaining relevant to post-postmodern readers. The study suggests that the novel appropriates subversive contemporary conventions and simultaneously expresses Victorian themes. It also argues that Perry’s text provides a commentary on the present by integrating the past. Further, this study explores the misogynistic portrayal of women in the novel and concludes that such depiction emphasizes Victorian patriarchy and women’s marginalization. This research highlights the novel’s depiction of trauma as interrelated to identity and examines its influence on the representation of women’s identity. It demonstrates that the novel’s spatial setting evokes traumatic memory and illustrates various responses to trauma through its employment of features and elements of genre fiction.

Trauma Therapy: Literary Concept of Overcoming Collective Pain (considering the works of modern Ukrainian prose)

The article studies the literary concept of tragedy in contemporary Ukrainian prose about Soviet past. The problem is relevant, because the trauma is important in the consolidation of Ukrainian society, affected by new trials. The subject of literary analysis is the comprehension of the Kurenivka man-made disaster of 1961, the history of which was declassified only in the era of independence. The novels “Life in Pink” by Halyna Horytska and “The Thaw Book. 1954–1964” by Tymur and Olena Lytovchenko. The author of the studio is guided by the theories of “collective trauma”, “culture of wound”, “trauma therapy”, “place of memory”. Accordingly, the literary model of collective tragedy is analysed. It is determined that the depiction of trauma in the context of memory of the Soviet past in both novels has many common features, namely: showing a characteristic of victims and perpetrators (a specific perpetrator — a representative of the authorities; a generalised perpetrator — the Soviet system; a perpetrator — relative); giving the places of remembrance the signs of grief by tracing the immediate destruction of objects in space; describing the death as understanding the transition of the soul to the afterlife; demonstrating memory erasure (forced silence of trauma, deliberate refusal of memory); identifying categories of remorse and punishment (suicide).The similarity of the author’s means of artistic speech is revealed: the combination of fiction and nonfiction, the introduction of journalistic comments and emotional judgment, giving semantic weight to details-symbols. The novelty of the study is the expansion of theoretical views on the problem of trauma in literary work, modeling the image of tragedy in the context of memory of the Soviet past. Further study of the problem is promising in the analysis of the aesthetic concept of the traumatic past, which is comprehended in modern prose.

A Literary Inquiry into Disability, Trauma and Narrative Strategies in Lisa Genova’s Novels

The reaisltic illustration of central characters suffering from rare and severe neurological sicknesses in Lisa Genova’s novels provide an ideal prospect to study trauma in pathography novels, a subset of science fiction. However, despite its scope, these genres of novels have received little consideration in American literary trauma studies. This paper will present a new analysis of trauma in relationship to the ‘neuro’genre, followed by an analysis of narrative and literary devices employed by the author to illustrate traumatic episodes in her novels. Through this case study and critical reflection of how the author has engaged trauma in the novels supports strengthening literary trauma theory within trauma literature and the genre also. The writing of traumatic experiences of the victims, transformed identity, stigmas, fears and phobias and providing face to the sufferer doomed fate, offers an opportunity for a neuroscientist turned novelist like Lisa Genova to advocate about the neurological sicknesses and its suffering with enriched empathetic experience to the non-scientific societies. It also provides a balanced realistic narrative platform for the reader to reflect on their own uncertainties, brought on by the representation of such fictional characterization. This literary research analysis will provide scope to science fiction authors, particularly those aiming to engage with medicine and literature, for a more accurate depiction of trauma in their work. It will further broaden the scope of research in phenomenology, narrative and genre theories and criticism in literary studies.

The Thorns of Trauma: Torture, Aftermath, and Healing in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Literature

While classical fairy tales do not portray much depth of suffering, many contemporary fairy-tale retellings explore trauma and its aftermath in great detail. This article analyzes depictions of trauma in fairy tales, utilizing as a primary case study the “Beauty and the Beast” retelling A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, arguing that this text provides a scientifically accurate representation of trauma and its aftermath, thereby articulating the real in fairy tales. Further, this article classifies that work as not simply a “dark” fairy tale (a contentious term that invites rethinking) but rather as fairy-tale torture porn, in a nod to the horror genre that foregrounds torture, surveillance, and the disruption of bodily boundaries and safety. However, the text’s optimistic account of healing is uniquely relevant in a time of widespread trauma due to a global pandemic, thereby demonstrating that fairy tales remain germane in contemporary contexts.

The Non-Linear Narrative and Depictions of Trauma in A Heart in a Body in the World

Putting together a pithy summary of Deb Caletti’s 2018 YA novel A Heart in a Body in the World is difficult, because the premise—a high school senior running cross country from Seattle to D.C. after a tragedy—completely fails to capture the reason you should read this novel. Yes, the physical feats are interesting, and our protagonist’s youth plays an important role in her journey, but the reason you have to read A Heart in a Body in the World? No other book, for me, has so viscerally captured the experience of recovering from trauma.

Representing Rape Trauma in Film: Moving beyond the Event

Trauma theorists foreground the unrepresentability of trauma; however, with modern innovations in visual representation, such as the photograph and cinema, depictions of trauma have begun to circulate across different mediums for a variety of audiences. These images tend to problematically present the traumatic event rather than the effects of trauma, such as traumatic memory. Specifically, some contemporary Hollywood popular films and television series that include rape as their subject matter often include a rape scene that can evoke affects such as disgust or empathy, and while these affects can last the duration of the film, they fail to shift popular discourses about rape because affect is more productive when it focuses on effects instead of events. As trauma studies has shifted to memory studies in the Humanities, and rape has become more prominent in popular culture through the circulation of personal testimony on social media and memoir, depictions of rape in cinema have slowly started to change from presentations of rape scenes to representations of rape trauma that highlight different affects, such as shame. Using Monster (2003), Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Room (2015), and the television series, 13 Reasons Why (2017) and Sharp Objects (2018) as case studies, this paper argues that, for an audiovisual depiction of rape to shift popular discourses about rape, it would have to function rhetorically to widen the cultural understanding of rape trauma beyond the event, and demonstrate that rape trauma should be understood as part of the personal, unconscious, cultural, and visual mediation of traumatic memory.

The Truths/Fictions/Traumas of Marikana: Exploring Violence and Trauma in Three Films, The Marikana Massacre: Through The Lens (2013), Miners Shot Down (2014), and Night is Coming: A Threnody for the Victims of Marikana (2014)

ABSTRACTBy exploring three films that centre on the Marikana strikes and killings of 2012, I seek to examine both the representations of violence as trauma, and the trauma of representing violence, within the context of visual, cinematic texts. I position Marikana, and the trauma of Marikana, as both a highly significant moment, and also as representative of deeper social and political traumas and injustices. I ask whether and how these films create a narrative context for this pivotal moment in South African history. I also question the effects of cinematic style and genre in the depictions of trauma and violence. The institutional context in which each film originated and developed is important, and I argue that the audience's expectations of the genre of documentary film also play a significant role in the way in which the films process trauma. I situate my paper in conversation with previous articles by Lucy Graham and Helene Strauss among others, that deal with cinematic portrayals of Marikana. By examining the selected films alongside each other, and through the lens of Decolonial Trauma Studies, I hope to elucidate the ways in which these South African films deal with and work through trauma.

Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse: Trauma and Transformation in AMC’s The Walking Dead

ABSTRACTThe experience of massive psychic trauma has been all too common in human history, uprooting us from the safety of our homes and thrusting us into strange and dangerous environments. The combination of uncertainty and stress bears down on us emotionally, putting the integrity of self-experience at risk. The psychological disorders resulting from trauma (such as posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and moral injury) can be disruptive, painful, and refractory. Among the many ways in which modern culture has reflected on these experiences, narrative media—such as novels, film, and television—have frequently dramatized the experience and aftermath of trauma. In this article I discuss the AMC television series The Walking Dead, which depicts the ongoing struggle of a group of survivors of a zombie apocalypse. The psychological and interpersonal impact of coping with the demands of a postapocalyptic world is the primary focus of the narrative of The Walking Dead. I examine of the series’ sustained depiction of trauma. I stress the central role of uncertainty, the disruption of our assumptive worlds, and the loss of trust in the foundations of our lives.

Second-Generation Memory and Contemporary Children’s Literature by Anastasia Ulanowicz (review)

Reviewed by: Second-Generation Memory and Contemporary Children’s Literature by Anastasia Ulanowicz Eric L. Tribunella (bio) Anastasia Ulanowicz. Second-Generation Memory and Contemporary Children’s Literature. New York: Routledge, 2013. As Anastasia Ulanowicz notes in her introduction to Second-Generation Memory and Contemporary Children’s Literature, for at least the past decade children’s literature scholars have paid considerable attention to the youth literature of atrocity, including works about the Holocaust for children and young adults. Ulanowicz cites a number of critics such as Hamida Bosmajian, Adrienne Kertzer, Kenneth Kidd, and Lydia Kokkola, who have all considered depictions of trauma and atrocity in works for children. Ulanowicz’s book makes a valuable contribution both to this body of children’s literature scholarship and to the fields of trauma and Holocaust studies, which have traditionally focused primarily on works for adults. In fact, the latter fields would benefit from an expanded approach that considers fully the importance of the kinds of texts discussed by Ulanowicz. Her book concentrates on depictions of what she calls “second-generation memory,” or the memories of traumatic events produced in subsequent generations that did not directly experience those events. To the extent that children’s literature is already imagined as a vehicle for the transmission of cultural memory to younger generations, Second-Generation Memory presents a particularly useful case for understanding the ways children are encouraged to internalize, re-interpret, and hence remember their family’s or community’s experience of past atrocity (6). Ulanowicz offers original interpretations and deft close readings of a variety of works. In chapter 1, she shows how Lois Lowry’s The Giver points to the importance of second-generation memory for social change and how this memory requires both a critical capacity about and an intimacy with prior generations. Her analysis of The Giver’s ambiguous ending will be essential reading for scholars and students of the novel. Chapter 2 focuses on Judy Blume’s Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself and makes a successful argument for the complexity of this realist novel and its adult representation of a child’s imaginative attempt to piece together and make sense of her family’s unimaginable experience of the Holocaust. In chapter 3, Ulanowicz turns her attention to Zlata Filipović’s Zlata’s Diary, a real account of a girl’s experience living in Sarajevo between 1991 and 1993 during the Bosnian conflict, which Ulanowicz reads against Anne Frank’s own famous diary in terms of how they construct a child’s perspective on war. Chapter 4 examines Marsha Forchuk Skrypuck’s The Hunger, a young adult problem novel [End Page 217] about a contemporary girl with an eating disorder who is transported to the site of the Armenian Genocide of the early twentieth century. Ulanowicz concludes with a chapter on Mordecai Gerstein’s picture book The Man Who Walked between the Towers and the construction of memory after September 11, 2001. Ulanowicz’s analysis of the correspondence between the 1974 setting of Gerstein’s book and the political context of its 2003 publication is incredibly astute. Throughout Second-Generation Memory, Ulanowicz moves breathlessly back and forth between such literary works and secondary references—for instance, from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to Zlata’s Diary, and from Roland Barthes’s study of photography to Judith Plotz’s reading of Charles Lamb, in one chapter—which some readers will applaud and others will find dizzying. Ulanowicz’s book is subtitled Ghost Images, a phrase that offers another way to think about second-generation memory and invokes an expression from photography referring to the usually accidental superimposition of two images in one photo. The metaphor of the ghost image usefully points Ulanowicz toward the importance of illustration and visuality in children’s books, and several chapters include extended discussions of relevant images (or verbal descriptions of images) from the literary works being discussed, related films, or relevant cultural contexts. In the chapter on Blume, Ulanowicz pays special attention to the importance of the photograph of Sally’s cousin Lila, who dies in the Dachau concentration camp, and what its ambiguity suggests about Sally’s search to uncover the mysteries of...

The Depiction of Trauma and its Effect on Character Development in the Brontë Fiction

The novels written by the Brontë sisters remain popular today and as authors they are highly regarded for their ability to express powerful emotions in their characters. This article analyses the portrayal of trauma in the form of child abuse and domestic violence in three key texts: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë. The authors’ intuitive understanding of trauma, both in its realistic depiction and its effect on character development is detailed with reference to modern psychological insights and recent literature on the psychological impact of trauma.

Stories of Catastrophe, Traces of Trauma

The “act of terror” in Mumbai in November 2008 has been widely regarded as “India's 9-11.” This article proposes that the proper setting of the “Mumbai attacks” is neither provided by what occurred in New York in 2001 nor by accentuating how the event engaged an audience of “distant others.” It is, similarly, not made sufficiently comprehensible through representations of Mumbai as the most cosmopolitan space in India and of India as “shining.” It, rather, consists in the violent founding of the Indian Republic and the traumatizing and traumatic vision that was inscribed through and into it. Such an alternative rendering of the “Mumbai attacks” offers a critical purchase on the notion of “governing traumatic events.” It also situates the analysis in the tension between assumptions about an immanence of trauma and depictions of trauma as eruption and (dis)rupture. While the independence of India equals the traumatic in its function as a founding act or moment, the “Mumbai attacks” ought to be regarded as confirmation of reified and presently hegemonic forms of political life.

Forgetting Futures: On Memory, Trauma and Identity , and: Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction (review)

Studies in American Fiction251 many other major figures of the period, as well as lesser known artists, convened in her living room for weekly sessions of "contactual inspiration " or informal professional development. McHenry also notes the phenomenal affect that Terry McMillan and the popularity ofOprah Winfrey's Book Club have had on the publishing industry. In many ways, their accomplishments ironically show how a history of black literacy in which the "consumption of literature" as well as "the production of literature" was always visibly present though often ignored by the general public. Though the politics of respectability appears as a theme for most of the literary societies McHenry profiles, her thesis permeates this veneer to reveal the inclusivity of such groups rather than accentuating elitist aspirations. She creates an interesting narrative that judiciously intertwines cultural criticism with historical facts, all while remaining unbiased towards her middle- and upper-class subjects. We see how class-consciousness is overruled by common concerns for the intellectual growth of the entire black community. An added bonus for me (and possibly other regionalists ) is how McHenry at times positions members of early literary societies as dislocated regional subjects; when their northern home was just as hostile as the slave South, they became a race united. Likewise, by the turn of the century, black southern women became icons of the "Woman's Era," spreading literacy throughout the region during the birth of Jim Crow. I highly recommend Elizabeth McHenry's Forgotten Readersbecause it illuminates the innovation it took to "uplift the race" through informal basic literacy instruction. University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignSherita Johnson Ramadanovic, Petar. Forgetting Futures: On Memory, Trauma and Identity. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2001. 171 pp. Cloth: $70.00. Vickroy, Laurie. Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction. Charlottesville: Univ. ofVirginia Press, 2002. 266 pp. Cloth: $49.50. Paper: $18.50. The early and mid-1990s saw an enormous amount ofscholarly analysis directed towards depictions of trauma in literature. The work of scholars such as Cathy Caruth, Dominick LaCapra, and Shoshana Felman inaugurated a field that was soon dubbed trauma theory. Since that time, trauma theory has evolved from a potentially evanescent academic vogue to a 252Reviews productive and durable interdisciplinary field of inquiry. In the wake of Bosnia, Kosovo, 9/11, and Iraq, trauma theory seems more immediately relevant than ever. Two recent books—Petar Ramadanovic's Forgetting Futures: On Memory, Trauma and Identity and Laurie Vickroy's Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction—each continue the development of this field in the new century by plotting different, but fruitful, courses in investigating the subject of literary trauma. Ramadanovic, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, divides his study into two sections: "Forgetting" and "Futures." The first of these sections lays the theoretical groundwork for the second by discussing Western conceptions of memory as articulated by the likes of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Hegel, and Nietszche. Against the Aristotelean notion of memory as a "presentation of the past in the present," Ramadanovic argues that memory "is irreducible to one temporal location . It is of the not yet, not only of the past" (3). The Platonic and Nietzschean conceptions of memory and forgetting particularly interest Ramadanovic, as he employs them to contest what he perceives to be an Aristotelean-derived conception of forgetting as the oppositional act to remembering. For Ramadanovic, forgetting is not simply the mere absence of memory but rather a distinct element of its own, a signifying interstice that marks an event as traumatic precisely because the traumatic event cannot be contained within the linear frameworks ofmemory and history. His readings of these major figures are brief but commendably insightful, and, in a genre that often considers Freud as the first intellectual to ever consider the question, it is highly refreshing to read a deeper archaeology of Western conceptions of memory. However, the study of trauma often sits uncomfortably alongside abstract theorizing, and when Ramadanovic moves from a discussion of Cicero to a review of the Bosnian conflict and the Dayton peace accords in but a few pages, the change in gears is jarringly abrupt. The strongest part ofthe book is Ramadanovic's discussion ofCicero's story of the poet...