Astute analysis of the work of a great Israeli poet through the lens of psychoanalysis, gender, nationalism, and trauma theory

The 9/11 attacks brought large-scale violence into the 21st century with force and have come to epitomize the entanglement of intimate vulnerability and virtual spectacle that is typical of the globalized present. This book works at the intersection of trauma studies, affect theory, and literary studies to offer radically new interpretive frames for interrogating the challenges inherent in representing the initial moments of the terrorist encounter. Beyond the paradigm of traumatic unspeakability, post-9/11 texts expose the materiality of the human body in its universal vulnerability. The intersubjective empathy this engenders is politically subversive, as it undermines the discourse of historical singularity and exceptionalism by establishing a global network of reference and dialogue. Innovative theoretical interconnections between clinical pathology, concepts of cultural trauma, and political aesthetics lay the foundations for exploring formally and geographically diverse texts. Close readings of works by Jonathan Safran Foer, Art Spiegelman, Don DeLillo, and William Gibson map the relationship between representations of 9/11 and complex aspects of trauma theory. This detailed approach makes a case for revisiting trauma theory and bringing its Freudian origins into the digitized present. It showcases trauma as a physical and psychological wound as well as an experience that is simultaneously pre-discursive and inhibited by the virtuality of the present-day real. Exploring how contemporary trauma studies can take into account the digitization and virtuality of present-day realities, this book is a key intervention in establishing a contemporary ethics of witnessing terror.

As a concept, 'trauma' has attracted a great deal of interest in literary studies. A key term in psychoanalytic approaches to literary study, trauma theory represents a critical approach that enables new modes of reading and of listening. It is a leading concept of our time, applicable to individuals, cultures, and nations. This book traces how trauma theory has come to constitute a discrete but influential approach within literary criticism in recent decades. It offers an overview of the genesis and growth of literary trauma theory, recording the evolution of the concept of trauma in relation to literary studies. In twenty-one essays, covering the origins, development, and applications of trauma in literary studies, Trauma and Literature addresses the relevance and impact this concept has in the field.

The Poetics of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Postmodern Literature provides an interdisciplinary exploration in early medical trauma treatment and the emergent postmodern canon of the 1960s and 1970s. By identifying key postmodern literary tropes (paranoia, uncanniness, biomediation) as products of an overarching post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) narrative paradigm, this concise study reveals unexplored aspects of the canonical novels at hand—such as the link between individual and collective traumatization—highlights the presence of epic elements in postmodern narratives, and identifies the influence of emerging psychiatric treatment on the post-WWII novels at hand. Performing a medical humanities reading of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5 (1969), and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961), this book introduces a novel way of examining trauma at the intersection of narrative, history, and medicine and recalibrates the importance of postmodern politics of transformation, while making the case for an aesthetics of trauma. By examining the historico-political developments that dictated the formation of PTSD in the wake of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, this book argues that the perception of PTSD symptoms directly influenced aesthetic and literary tropes of the Cold War era.

Displaced Memories analyzes the representation of traumatic memories--political imprisonment, torture, survival, and exile--in the literary works of Alicia Kozameh, Alicia Partnoy, and Nora Strejilevich, survivors of Argentina's "Dirty War" (1976-1983). Beginning with an examination of the history of Argentina's last dictatorship, the conditions that led the authors to exile, and the contexts in which the texts were published, Portela provides the theoretical tools for the understanding of narratives of trauma and displacement caused by political violence. The author proposes a theory that critiques post-structuralist paradigms of trauma, which present trauma as an unclaimed experience impossible to apprehend, as she argues for an analysis of the symbolic uses of language, presenting trauma as a claimed experience that can be brought into representation and therefore create the conditions of possibility for working through.

The 9/11 attacks brought large-scale violence into the 21st century with force and have come to epitomize the entanglement of intimate vulnerability and virtual spectacle that is typical of the globalized present. This book works at the intersection of trauma studies, affect theory, and literary studies to offer radically new interpretive frames for interrogating the challenges inherent in representing the initial moments of the terrorist encounter. Beyond the paradigm of traumatic unspeakability, post-9/11 texts expose the materiality of the human body in its universal vulnerability. The intersubjective empathy this engenders is politically subversive, as it undermines the discourse of historical singularity and exceptionalism by establishing a global network of reference and dialogue. Innovative theoretical interconnections between clinical pathology, concepts of cultural trauma, and political aesthetics lay the foundations for exploring formally and geographically diverse texts. Close readings of works by Jonathan Safran Foer, Art Spiegelman, Don DeLillo, and William Gibson map the relationship between representations of 9/11 and complex aspects of trauma theory. This detailed approach makes a case for revisiting trauma theory and bringing its Freudian origins into the digitized present. It showcases trauma as a physical and psychological wound as well as an experience that is simultaneously pre-discursive and inhibited by the virtuality of the present-day real. Exploring how contemporary trauma studies can take into account the digitization and virtuality of present-day realities, this book is a key intervention in establishing a contemporary ethics of witnessing terror.

Trauma has become a hotly contested topic in literary studies. But interest in trauma is not new; its roots extend to the Romantic period, when novelists and the first psychiatrists influenced each others' investigations of the »wounded mind«. This book looks back to these early attempts to understand trauma, reading a selection of Romantic novels in dialogue with Romantic and contemporary psychiatry. It then carries that dialogue forward to postmodern fiction, examining further how empirical approaches can deepen our theorizations of trauma. Within an interdisciplinary framework, this study reveals fresh insights into the poetics, politics, and ethics of trauma fiction.