Contemporary Trauma Narratives: Liminality and the Ethics of Form

264 Pages·2014·2.098 MB·English

by  Jean-Michel Ganteau (editor), Susana Onega (editor)

Contemporary Trauma Narratives
This book provides a comprehensive compilation of essays on the relation-
ship between formal experimentation and ethics in a number of generi-
cally hybrid or “liminal” narratives dealing with individual and collective
traumas, running the spectrum from the testimonial novel and the fi ctional
autobiography to the fake memoir, written by a variety of famous and more
neglected contemporary British, Irish, US, Canadian, and German writers,
including Margaret Atwood, Sebastian Barry, Jenny Diski, Lawrence Dur-
rell, James Frey, Anne Karpf, Jon McGregor, Daniel Mendelsohn, Anne
Michaels, David Mitchell, W. G. Sebald and Will Self.
Building on the psychological insights and theorising of the fathers of
trauma studies (Janet, Freud, Ferenczi) and of contemporary trauma crit-
ics and theorists, the articles examine the narrative strategies, structural
experimentations and hybridizations of forms, paying special attention to
the way in which the texts fi ght the unrepresentability of trauma by per-
forming rather than representing it. The ethicality or unethicality involved
in this endeavor is assessed from the combined perspectives of the non-foun-
dational, non-cognitive, discursive ethics of alterity inspired by Emmanuel
Levinas, and the ethics of vulnerability. This approach makes Contempo-
rary Trauma Narratives an excellent resource for scholars of contemporary
literature, trauma studies and literary theory.
‘An original collection, which will make a signifi cant contribution to the
study of literature and trauma.’
—Susan Derwin, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center,
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Susana Onega is Professor of English at the University of Zaragoza, Spain.
She is a member of the Academia Europaea, a former Honorary Research
Fellow at Birkbeck College, and the Head of a research team currently
working on the rhetoric and politics of suff ering in contemporary narra-
tives in English.
Jean-Michel Ganteau is Professor of British literature at the University of
Montpellier 3, France. He is the main editor of the journal Etudes bri-
tanniques contemporaines and the co-editor of the ‘Present Perfect’ series
(PULM) and he currently works on the ethics of vulnerability in contem-
porary British fi ction.
Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature
1 Environmental Criticism for the 8 The Gothic in Contemporary
Twenty-First Century Literature and Popular Culture
Edited by Stephanie LeMenager, Pop Goth
Teresa Shewry, and Ken Hiltner Edited by Justin D. Edwards and
Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet
2 Theoretical Perspectives on
Human Rights and Literature 9 Wallace Stevens and
Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg and Pre-Socratic Philosophy
Alexandra Schultheis Moore Metaphysics and the Play of
Violence
3 Resistance to Science in Daniel Tompsett
Contemporary American Poetry
Bryan Walpert 10 Modern Orthodoxies
Judaic Imaginative Journeys of the
4 Magic, Science, and Empire in Twentieth Century
Postcolonial Literature Lisa Mulman
The Alchemical Literary
Imagination 11 Eugenics, Literature, and
Kathleen J. Renk Culture in Post-war Britain
Clare Hanson
5 The Black Female Body in
American Literature and Art 12 Postcolonial Readings of Music
Performing Identity in World Literature
Caroline A. Brown Turning Empire on Its Ear
Cameron Fae Bushnell
6 Narratives of Migration and
Displacement in Dominican 13 Stanley Cavell, Literature, and
Literature Film
Danny Méndez The Idea of America
Edited by Andrew Taylor and Áine
7 The Cinema and the Origins of Kelly
Literary Modernism
Andrew Shail 14 William Blake and the Digital
Humanities
Collaboration, Participation, and
Social Media
Jason Whittaker and Roger
Whitson
15 American Studies, Ecocriticism, 24 Class and the Making of
and Citizenship American Literature
Thinking and Acting in the Local Created Unequal
and Global Commons Edited by Andrew Lawson
Edited by Joni Adamson and
Kimberly N. Ruffi n 25 Narrative Space and Time
Representing Impossible
16 International Perspectives on Topologies in Literature
Feminist Ecocriticism Elana Gomel
Edited by Greta Gaard, Simon C.
Estok, and Serpil Oppermann 26 Trauma in Contemporary
Literature
17 Feminist Theory across Narrative and Representation
Disciplines Edited by Marita Nadal and
Feminist Community and Mónica Calvo
American Women’s Poetry
Shira Wolosky 27 Contemporary Trauma
Narratives
18 Mobile Narratives Liminality and the Ethics of Form
Travel, Migration, and Edited by Susana Onega and
Transculturation Jean-Michel Ganteau
Edited by Eleftheria Arapoglou,
Mónika Fodor, and Jopi Nyman
19 Shipwreck in Art and Literature
Images and Interpretations from
Antiquity to the Present Day
Edited by Carl Thompson
20 Literature, Speech Disorders,
and Disability
Talking Normal
Edited by Chris Eagle
21 The Unnameable Monster in
Literature and Film
Maria Beville
22 Cognition, Literature and
History
Edited by Mark J. Bruhn and
Donald R. Wehrs
23 Community and Culture in
Post-Soviet Cuba
Guillermina De Ferrari
This page intentionally left blank
Contemporary
Trauma Narratives
Liminality and the Ethics of Form
Edited by
Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau
NEW YORK LONDON
First published 2014
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
The right of Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau to be identified as
the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Contemporary trauma narratives : liminality and the ethics of form /
[edited by] Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau.
pages cm. — (Routledge interdisciplinary perspectives on literature ;
27)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Psychic trauma in literature. 2. Liminality in literature. 3. Ethics
in literature. I. Ganteau, Jean-Michel. II. Onega, Susana.
PN56.P93C66 2014
809'.93353—dc23
2013045919
ISBN13: 978-1-138-02449-6 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-1-315-77453-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by IBT Global.
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Performing the Void: Liminality and the
Ethics of Form in Contemporary Trauma Narratives 1
JEAN-MICHEL GANTEAU AND SUSANA ONEGA
PART I
Ethics and Generic Hybridity
1 Learning from Fakes:
Memoir, Confessional Ethics, and the Limits of Genre 21
LEIGH GILMORE
2 “ . . . with a foot in both worlds”:
The Liminal Ethics of Jenny Diski’s Postmodern Fables 36
MARIA GRAZIA NICOLOSI
3 Witnessing without Witnesses: Atwood’s Oryx
and Crake as Limit-Case of Fictional Testimony 53
MARIE-LUISE KOHLKE
4 “I do remember terrible dark things, and loss, and noise”:
Historical Trauma and Its Narrative Representation
in Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture 70
RUDOLF FREIBURG
viii Contents
PART II
Ethics and the Aesthetics of Excess
5 Vulnerable Form and Traumatic Vulnerability:
Jon McGregor’s Even the Dogs 89
JEAN-MICHEL GANTEAU
6 Ethics, Aesthetics, and History in
Lawrence Durrell’s Avignon Quintet 104
DIANNE VIPOND
7 The Ethics of Breaking up the Family
Romance in David Mitchell’s Number9Dream 120
GERD BAYER
8 “circling and circling and circling . . . whirligogs”: A Knotty
Novel for a Tangled Object Trauma in Will Self’s Umbrella 137
GEORGES LETISSIER
PART III
Ethics and Structural Experimentation
9 Family Archive Fever: Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost 159
MARC AMFREVILLE
10 “The Roche Limit”: Digression and Return
in W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn 176
IVAN STACY
11 “Separateness and Connectedness”:
Generational Trauma and the Ethical Impulse in
Anne Karpf’s The War After: Living with the Holocaust 193
SILVIA PELLICER-ORTÍN
12 Hybridity, Montage, and the Rhetorics and Ethics
of Suff ering in Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces 210
SUSANA ONEGA
Contributors 231
Index 239
Acknowledgements
The idea for this book originated in at least three academic events convened
by the editors of the present volume: the Trauma and Ethics in Contem-
porary British Literature seminar hosted by the ESSE 2008 conference in
Aarhus, the Trauma and Romance seminar hosted by the 2010 ESSE con-
ference in Turin, and the Ethics of Limit-Case Trauma Narratives seminar
hosted by the 2012 ESSE conference in Istanbul. The three events were
concerned with ethics, a dimension that seeps into most of the chapters in
the present collection, the alliance between trauma and ethics being fairly
well documented in contemporary criticism and theory.
The seminars themselves were part of the wider ongoing research activi-
ties carried out by the editors in the last decade. The co-authorship of the
introduction and the co-editing of the book by Jean-Michel Ganteau are
part of a project funded by the French Ministry of Education through the
laboratory to which he belongs (EMMA-EA 741). The co-authorship of the
introduction and the co-editing of the book by Susana Onega is part of a
project fi nanced by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness
(MINECO) (code FFI2012–32719). Susana Onega is also thankful for the
support of the government of Aragón and the European Social Fund (ESF)
(code H05).
We would like to thank the editors of the journal Etudes britanniques
contemporaines for their kind permission to reproduce part of Jean-Michel
Ganteau’s article on Jon McGregor’s Even the Dogs.