Haunted Narratives : : Life Writing in an Age of Trauma / / Gabriele Rippl; ed. by Philipp Schweighauser, Tiina Kirss, Margit Sutrop, Therese Steffen.

• VerfasserIn: Rippl, Gabriele,
• MitwirkendeR: Cottier, Annie,; Escherle, Nora Anna,; Hollo, Maarja,; Kirss, Tiina,; Kurvet-Käosaar, Leena,; Laanes, Eneken,; Preuss, Stefanie,; Rein, Eva,; Rippl, Gabriele,; Sakova, Aija,; Schweighauser, Philipp,; Schönfelder, Christa,; Steffen, Therese,; Straub, Julia,; Sutrop, Margit,
• HerausgeberIn: Kirss, Tiina,; Schweighauser, Philipp,; Steffen, Therese,; Sutrop, Margit,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2018]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (360 p.)

Exploring life writing from a variety of cultural contexts, Haunted Narratives provides new insights into how individuals and communities across time and space deal with traumatic experiences and haunting memories. From the perspectives of trauma theory, memory studies, gender studies, literary studies, philosophy, and post-colonial studies, the volume stresses the lingering, haunting presence of the past in the present. The contributors focus on the psychological, ethical, and representational difficulties involved in narrative negotiations of traumatic memories.Haunted Narratives focuses on life writing in the broadest sense of the term: biographies and autobiographies that deal with traumatic experiences, autobiographically inspired fictions on loss and trauma, and limit-cases that transcend clear-cut distinctions between the factual and the fictional. In discussing texts as diverse as Toni Morrison's Beloved, Vikram Seth's Two Lives, deportation narratives of Baltic women, Christa Wolf's Kindheitsmuster, Joy Kogawa's Obasan, and Ene Mihkelson's Ahasveeruse uni, the contributors add significantly to current debates on life writing, trauma, and memory; the contested notion of "cultural trauma"; and the transferability of clinical-psychological notions to the study of literature and culture.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Life Writing in an Age of Trauma -- Part One: Life Writing and Trauma: Theorizing the Vicissitudes of Representing Violence -- 1. Seeing Ghosts: Theorizing Haunting in Literary Texts -- 2. Trauma and Utopia: Benjamin, Adorno, and Elie Wiesel's Night -- Part Two: Auto/biographies as Trauma Narratives -- 3. Richard Wollheim's Germs: Life Writing as Therapy, Despite Theory -- 4. Writing Childhood, Writing Lack -- 5. Loquacious Silences: Vikram Seth's Two Lives and the German Language -- 6. Unsayable or Merely Unsaid? -- 7. Voicing Trauma in the Deportation Narratives of Baltic Women -- 8. Trauma Narratives and National Identity -- Part Three: Limit-cases: Exploring the Limits of Telling Pain -- 9. "Metaphors for the Scots Today": History and National Identity in Scottish Drama after 1945 -- 10. Aspects of Post-Imperial Constructions of Nationhood -- 11. Anecdotalization of Memory in Jaan Kross's Paigallend -- 12. Meddling with Memory - Negating Grand Narratives -- 13. Fighting Fear with Writing: Christa Wolf's Kindheitsmuster and Ene Mihkelson's Ahasveeruse uni (The Sleep of Ahasuerus) -- 14. The Stigma of the Autobiographical -- 15. The Search for the Lost Parent in Joy Kogawa's Obasan and Ene Mihkelson's Ahasveeruse uni (The Sleep of Ahasuerus) -- 16. Making the Silence Speak: A Critical Discussion of Trauma Transmission and Identity Formation -- Part Four: Fictions of Loss and Trauma -- 17. (Re-)Visions of the Buried Self: Childhood Trauma and Self-Narration in Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye -- 18. Grasping Patterns of Violence -- 19. Nostalgia and Redemption in Bernard Kangro's Joonatan Novels -- 20. Renegotiations of Longing and Belonging: Exile, Memory, and Nostalgia -- 21. Haunted Whispers from the Footnotes: Life Writing in Raj Kamal Jha's Fireproof -- 22. What Only Fiction Can Do -- Afterword: Ethical and Political Aspects of Life Writing and Remembering -- Contributors -- Index