Donna Tartt’s Dostoevsky: Trauma and the Displaced Self

2018 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-407
Author(s):  
Yuri Corrigan
Keyword(s):  
Healing Process ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Trauma Studies ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Soul Loss ◽  
Opening Up

Abstract This essay explores Donna Tartt’s adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels The Adolescent, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov in The Goldfinch as a guide to understanding Dostoevsky’s unorthodox and theologically inflected theory of trauma. The essay argues that both authors approach traumatic memory through the ancient folkloric archetype of the “external soul” (the inner essence displaced into external objects for safekeeping) and conceive of the healing process as the attempt to bring the externalized soul—and its unwanted memories—back into the body. This motif allows both writers to reimagine the concept of the soul in modern secular terms: in Tartt’s conception of post-traumatic “soul loss” as a critical stage in the moral and aesthetic education of the self, and in Dostoevsky’s view of wounded memory as opening up the self to the more expansive, overwhelming trauma of religious experience. Tartt’s use of Dostoevsky in The Goldfinch underscores the Russian author’s value to contemporary trauma studies as an alternative to the prevailing canon.

scholarly journals Von dem Trauma des anderen und der Sehnsucht nach Behausung in Lutz Seilers Roman Kruso (2014)

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 320-345
Author(s):  
Sophie Wennerscheid
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Trauma Studies ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Loved One ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
East German ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
Affective Impact

AbstractDrawing on Sara Ahmed’s concept of the ‘body not at home’ on the one hand and on the concept of the disturbing ‘foreign body’ (Fremdkörper) as deployed in various trauma studies on the other, this article explores how the traumatized body is to be understood as a disoriented and unstable body. Trauma, however, is not only something that leaves one restless. It also connects one with the trauma of another and leads to mutual understanding. Having been affected by the wound of another, a certain kind of communication among the wounded emerges, which makes traumatic memory accessible. How such an affective impact may look can be shown by examining Lutz Seiler’s award-winning novel Kruso (2014). Set on the isle of Hiddensee shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Seiler tells the story of two men, Kruso and Ed, both traumatized by the loss of a loved one. As both are East German castaways and equally affected by their loss, they develop an intimate relationship, one not void of suppressed desire, mistrust, and aggression. Only years after Kruso’s death is Ed able to come to terms with the past and find a place for burying the vanished dead.

scholarly journals Traumatized Children and Post-Traumatic Growth in Francophone Trauma Novels

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Lalonde
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Body Language ◽  
The Body ◽  
Trauma Studies ◽  
Traumatized Children ◽  
Post Traumatic Growth ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
Traumatized Self ◽  
Health Discourse ◽  
The Relationship

In an attempt to decolonize Trauma Studies, a dominant mental health discourse, and to expand our understanding of trauma and post-traumatic growth, this project investigates J.M.G. Le Clézio’s The African (L’africain 2004) and Ahmadou Kourouma’s: Allah is Not Obliged 2011) (Allah n’est pas obligé 2000) and the untranslated and unfinished Quand on refuse on dit non (2004). The term “decolonizing Trauma Studies” refers to a remapping of this particular field of Cultural Theory by studying these non-Western “trauma novels”. The first critical suggestion advanced is that these authors explore the traumatic consequences of lies that are ontological and phenomenological in nature and maintained through language (logos). This research then examines Le Clézio’s and Kourouma’s models of healing, which centre on the body, language, and an empathetic re-encounter with the traumatized self through narratives. Another major finding is that these texts experiment with literature, manipulating it into new forms, thus expanding our understanding of the relationship between the literary arts and post-traumatic growth theories and treatments.

scholarly journals AVICENNA ON ANIMAL SELF-AWARENESS, COGNITION AND IDENTITY

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96
Author(s):  
Ahmed Alwishah
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Study ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
The Third ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Do So

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive and systematic study of Avicenna's account of animal self-awareness and cognition. In the first part, I explain how, for Avicenna, in contrast to human self-awareness, animal self-awareness is taken to be indirect, mixed-up (makhlūṭ), and an intermittent awareness. In his view, animal self-awareness is provided by the faculty of estimation (wahm); hence, in the second part, I explore the cognitive role of the faculty of estimation in animals, and how that relates to self-awareness. The faculty of estimation, according to Avicenna, serves to distinguish one's body and its parts from external objects, and plays a role in connecting the self to its perceptual activities. It follows that animal self-awareness, unlike human self-awareness, is essentially connected to the body. In the third part of the paper, I show that, while Avicenna denies animals awareness of their self-awareness, he explicitly affirms that animals can grasp their individual identity, but, unlike humans, do so incidentally, as part of their perceptual awareness.

Diaghilev and British Writing

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-92
Author(s):  
Susan Jones
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Opening Up

This article explores the diversity of British literary responses to Diaghilev's project, emphasising the way in which the subject matter and methodologies of Diaghilev's modernism were sometimes unexpectedly echoed in expressions of contemporary British writing. These discussions emerge both in writing about Diaghilev's work, and, more discretely, when references to the Russian Ballet find their way into the creative writing of the period, serving to anchor the texts in a particular cultural milieu or to suggest contemporary aesthetic problems in the domain of literary aesthetics developing in the period. Figures from disparate fields, including literature, music and the visual arts, brought to their criticism of the Ballets Russes their individual perspectives on its aesthetics, helping to consolidate the sense of its importance in contributing to the inter-disciplinary flavour of modernism across the arts. In the field of literature, not only did British writers evaluate the Ballets Russes in terms of their own poetics, their relationship to experimentation in the novel and in drama, they developed an increasing sense of the company's place in dance history, its choreographic innovations offering material for wider discussions, opening up the potential for literary modernism's interest in impersonality and in the ‘unsayable’, discussions of the body, primitivism and gender.

‘A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust’: The World and Self in Thomas Hardy's Poems

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
Body Subject

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.

Stress management: Corpus-based insights into vernacular interpretations of stress

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
Laurel Smith Stvan
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Stress ◽  
American English ◽  
Physical Symptom ◽  
The Body ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
The Past ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
Semantic Shift

Examination of the term stress in naturally occurring vernacular prose provides evidence of three separate senses being conflated. A corpus analysis of 818 instances of stress from non-academic texts in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the Corpus of American Discourses on Health (CADOH) shows a negative prosody for stress, which is portrayed variously as a source outside the body, a physical symptom within the body and an emotional state. The data show that contemporary speakers intermingle the three senses, making more difficult a discussion between doctors and patients of ways to ‘reduce stress’, when stress might be interpreted as a stressor, a symptom, or state of anxiety. This conflation of senses reinforces the impression that stress is pervasive and increasing. In addition, a semantic shift is also refining a new sense for stress, as post-traumatic stress develops as a specific subtype of emotional stress whose use has increased in circulation in the past 20 years.

Scientific aspect on Diet explained by Susrutha in Wound Healing

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (05) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manoj Kumar ◽  
Amareshappa . ◽  
Anjali Bharadwaj ◽  
Shailaja S. V.
Keyword(s):  
Wound Healing ◽  
Mineral Metabolism ◽  
Healing Process ◽  
Surgical Techniques ◽  
The Body ◽  
Wound Healing Process ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Different Sources ◽  
Scientific Aspect ◽  
Important Branch

Wound healing has been the burning problem in a surgical practice because of a remarkable increase in the number of traumatic cases. A wound causes a number of changes in the body that can affect the healing process, including changes in energy, protein, carbohydrate, fat, vitamin and mineral metabolism. Various Ayurveda literatures, particularly, Sushruta Samhita, which is said to be an ancient textbook of surgery in Ayurveda, has mentioned about the diet for the person suffering from the wound, and the author said that diet plays a very important role in the wound healing process. Sushruta - The father of surgery has scientifically classified it in a systemic manner, whose wealth of clinical material and the principles of management are valid even today. Shalya Tantra (surgical branch in Ayurveda Science) is one of the important branch of Ayurveda, in which surgical and para-surgical techniques has described for management of various diseases. Vrana is the most important and widely described chapter of Shalya Tantra. Vrana (wound) is one of them, which have been managed by human being from starting of civilization. Under the circumstances, the first thing which the men came across was the injury from different sources which caused him the Vrana. Vrana is seen as debilitating and scaring disorder, usually seen affecting the human being at any age. Well balanced nutrition plays an essential role in the wound healing.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua S. Walden
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The book’s epilogue explores the place of musical portraiture in the context of posthumous depictions of the deceased, and in relation to the so-called posthuman condition, which describes contemporary changes in the relationship of the individual with such aspects of life as technology and the body. It first examines Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to view how Bernard Herrmann’s score relates to issues of portraiture and the depiction of the identity of the deceased. It then considers the work of cyborg composer-artist Neil Harbisson, who has aimed, through the use of new capabilities of hybridity between the body and technology, to convey something akin to visual likeness in his series of Sound Portraits. The epilogue shows how an examination of contemporary views of posthumous and posthuman identities helps to illuminate the ways music represents the self throughout the genre of musical portraiture.

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