This book occurs at the intersection of philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis and the visual arts. Each chapter looks at art produced in various traumatogenic cultures: detention centres, post-Holocaust film, autobiography and many more.Other chapters look at the Juarez femicides, the production of collective memory, of makeshift memorials, acts of forgiveness and contemporary forms of trauma. The book proposes new ways of 'thinking trauma', foregrounding the possibility of healing and the task that the critical humanities has to play in this healing. Where is its place in an increasingly terror-haunted world, where personal and collective trauma is as much of an everyday occurrence as it is incomprehensible? What has become known as the 'classical model of trauma' has foregrounded the unrepresentability of the traumatic event. New, revisionist approaches seek to move beyond an aporetic understanding of trauma, investigating both intersubjective and intrasubjective psychic processes of healing. Traumatic memory is not always verbal and 'iconic' forms of communication are part of the arts of healing.
Arleen Ionescu is Tenured Professor of English Literature and Critical Theory at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Research supported by the Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning. Maria Margaroni is Associate Professor in Literary Theory and Feminist Thought at the University of Cyprus.
Arleen Ionescu, Maria Margaroni, Introduction / Part I: Holocaust Trauma and the Ambivalence of Healing: Irreverent Takes / 1. Ivan Callus (University of Malta), Unfamiliar Healing: Reconsidering the Fragment in Narratives of Holocaust Trauma / 2. Arleen Ionescu (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), Forgiving as Self-Healing? The Case of Eva Mozes Kor / 3. Lucia Ispas (University of Ploiesti), (Mis)Representing Trauma through Humour: Roberto Benigni's La vita e bella / Part II: Mass Trauma, Art and the Healing Politics of Place / 4. Mieke Bal (University of Amsterdam), Improving Public Space: Trauma Art and Retrospective-Futuristic Healing / 5. Ernst van Alphen (University of Leiden), Transforming Trauma into Memory / 6. Radhika Mohanram (Cardiff University), Textures of Indian Memories 7. Irene Scicluna (Cardiff University), How Do We Mourn? A Look at Makeshift Memorials / Part III: Intimate Healing / 8. Laurent Milesi (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), Literature between Antidote and Black Magic: The Autofiction of Chloe Delaume / 9. Olga Michael (University of Central Lancashire, Cyprus), Queer Trauma, Paternal Loss, and Graphic Healing in Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic / 10. Nicholas Chare (University of Montreal), Concrete Loss: Attesting to Trauma in Teresa Margolles's Karla, Hilario Reyes Gallegos / 11. Maria Margaroni (University of Cyprus), The Monstrosity of the New Wounded: Thinking Trauma, Survival and Resistance with Catherine Malabou and Julia Kristeva
Giving up the overgeneralized concept of trauma, the contributors to this intriguing volume, following various disciplinary perspectives at the intersection of humanities and social sciences, carefully investigate particular geopolitical, social and cultural contexts of individual and collective traumatic experiences. Whereas classical trauma studies emphasized these experiences' inaccessibility and unrepresentability, they shift attention to various possibilities and techniques of their healing. -- Vladimir Biti, University of Vienna Covering a diverse range of writers and thinkers from across literature, film, architecture, philosophy and psychoanalysis, this collection of papers by prominent scholars of the theoretical humanities is a fascinating contribution to the study of the relation between culture and trauma. The diversity of historical and cultural phenomena explored, as well as the conceptual and textual sophistication of its analyses, will ensure this volume's status as a primary text in the field for decades to come. -- Josh Cohen, Reader in English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths University of London This is an extremely significant volume addressing a timely issue of great importance and so advancing current debates in the field. The international and eminent contributors bring together the most contemporary theoretical and philosophical approaches, challenging literary and cultural texts and a range of traumatic events in global history in order to investigate the possibilities of cultural healing and articulate, without passing over suffering, ideas of 'speaking anew'. -- Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought, Department of English, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK In this all too timely collection, Arleen Ionescu and Maria Margaroni have assembled essays that thoughtfully draw upon the critical resources of the humanities to reflect on the conditions and limits of old as well as new arts of healing. As they follow through on the editors' commitment to move beyond a general concept of trauma, the richly diverse perspectives represented in this volume crucially challenge commonplace notions of healing as an individual, communal, or national redemption of a lost sense of wholeness and sovereignty, thereby mapping a freshly futural orientation for trauma studies. -- Karyn Ball, Associate Professor of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta
