Postcolonial Memory, Postmodern Intertextuality: Anton Shammas's Arabesques Revisited

PMLA ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael S. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Reading Strategy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Minority Discourse ◽  
Screen Memories

This article challenges the interpretive consensus on Anton Shammas's 1986 Hebrew novel Arabesques. A narrow application of theoretical postcolonial constructs (e.g., making the events of 1948 the historical trauma that defines the collective memory of Shammas's narrative) misrepresents the complexity of the text as a whole. Analyzing the limitations of readings based solely on minority-discourse assumptions, the essay offers a counterreading, balancing the postcolonial grid with a postmodernist one. Tracing the novel's screen memories and its most daring (yet well-camouflaged) intertextuality opens up possibilities of representation and redefines the minority-majority relations in the novel. This reading strategy, attentive to the text's “difference from itself,” allows for a nuanced redefinition of the identities constructed in Arabesque and suggests a new explanation for the choice of Hebrew as the language for this remembrance of lost Arab time.

Identity and memory as resilience: Applications of liberation psychology in a rural Maya Achi community

2022 ◽  
pp. 136346152110673
Author(s):  
Heidi Mitton
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Popular Education ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Liberation Psychology ◽  
The Status ◽  
Education And Development ◽  
Collective Resilience ◽  
Insight Into

This study sought to understand interpretations of interconnections between historical trauma, contemporary violence, and resilience in a Maya Achi community currently engaged in promoting peace and social change through popular education. In particular, the ways in which participants drew upon identity and memory in articulating characteristics of community distress and resilience are discussed. The research is informed by liberation psychology and critical perspectives of mental health, particularly considering the challenges inherent in the promotion of collective memory of trauma and resistance in contexts of violence and humanitarian settings. Participant reflections on historical and contemporary violence highlight elements of collective distress, connecting identity and memory with acts of both oppression and resistance. Education and development are signaled as possible sites of resilience but also experienced as sites of power upholding the status quo. Diverse experiences and applications of identity and memory provide insight into the ways in which community organizations working in contexts of political violence might navigate polarizing and paradoxical discourses in order to subvert, co-opt, or adapt to hegemonic cultural, political, and economic power relations in the process of transformation for collective resilience.

scholarly journals Deconstructing the Portrayal of Adults’ Superiority towards Children in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s "A Little Princess"

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-31
Author(s):  
NUR INAYAH ◽  
Bambang Purwanto
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Reading Strategy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
Frances Hodgson Burnett ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

This study discusses how the portrayal of adults’ superiority towards children in the novel A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett is deconstructed by the work itself. The adults’ superiority is portrayed in the novel, in which the adults are depicted as more superior figure than children. However, the perfect descriptions of the children as portrayed by Sara in the novel show that the hierarchy in child-adult relationship is able to be reversed. This study uses descriptive qualitative method supported by Structuralism’s binary opposition and Derrida’s Deconstruction reading strategy. The aim of this study is to destabilize the novel, A Little Princess, by applying Deconstruction reading strategy. This study shows that the novel deconstructs its portrayal of adults’ superiority towards children. So, by destabilizing the binary opposition in the novel, that is an adult opposes a child, the child-adult hierarchy is reversed. Keywords: adults, children, deconstruction, superiority

Ghost Meat

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-80
Author(s):  
Catherine Belling
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Linear Topology ◽  
The Real ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fictional Representations ◽  
The Devil

Abstract The ambivalent attraction of feeling horror might explain some paradoxes regarding the consumption of representations of atrocities committed in the real world, in the past, on actual other people. How do horror fictions work in the transmission or exploitation of historical trauma? How might they function as prosthetic memories, at once disturbing and informative to readers who might otherwise not be exposed to those histories at all? What are the ethical implications of horror elicited by fictional representations of historical suffering? This article engages these questions through the reading of Mo Hayder’s 2004 novel The Devil of Nanking. Hayder exploits horror’s appeal and also—by foregrounding the acts of representation, reading, and spectatorship that generate this response—opens that process to critique. The novel may productively be understood as a work of posttraumatic fiction, both containing and exposing the concentric layers of our representational engagement with records of past atrocity. Through such a reading, a spherical rather than linear topology emerges for history itself, a structure of haunted and embodied consumption.

scholarly journals Desventuras do Pós-independência em Moçambique: nacionalismo, guerra civil e memória coletiva

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Andressa Da Silva Machado
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
War Literature ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Civil War Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literature History ◽  
Literary Narrative

O presente artigo apresenta as principais contradições do projeto político nacional da Frelimo, em sua tentativa de construção de uma consciência nacional no pós-independência em Moçambique. É possível  identificar alguns aspectos que interagiam e moldaram a memória coletiva do povo moçambicano com relação à guerra civil, como no romance Ventos do Apocalipse de Paulina Chiziane, onde a autora enuncia, de forma crítica ao governo socialista e unipartidarista em Moçambique, uma narrativa literária que pode ser analisada como fonte histórica.Palavras-chaves: Moçambique. Nacionalismo. Guerra civil. Literatura.Abstract This paper presents the main contradictions of Frelimo's national political project, in its attempt to build a national consciousness post-independence in Mozambique. It is possible to identify some aspects that interacted and shaped the collective memory of the Mozambican people in relation to the civil war, as in the novel Ventos do Apocalipse by Paulina Chiziane, where the author critically enunciates the socialist and unipartisan government in Mozambique, a literary narrative that can be analyzed as a historical source. Keywords: Mozambique; Nationalism; Civil war; Literature; History of Africa

scholarly journals PUBLIC RITUALS: GRASPING MYTH IN DAVID GROSSMAN’S TO THE END OF THE LAND

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-250
Author(s):  
Yael Almog
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Israeli Society ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Word Play ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
Modern Hebrew

The article investigates David Grossman’s To the End of the Land as an intervention into debates on the presence of myth in Israeli society. Do resonances of the Bible in Modern Hebrew perpetuate biblical narratives as constitutive to Israeli collective memory? Do literary references to the Bible dictate the rootedness of Hebrew speakers to the Land? Grossman’s novel discerns the implications of these questions for the political agency of individuals. It does so through the striking adaptation of a motif much frequented in Israeli literature: the Binding of Isaac. The prominent biblical myth is transformed in the novel through a set of interplays: the unusual enactment of the Akedah scene by a matriarch; original exegeses of biblical names; and the merging of several biblical narratives into the novel’s structure. The protagonists reveal their “awareness” of these interplays, when they reflect on the correspondence of their “lives” with various biblical narratives – whose divergence from one another enable them to negotiate the overdetermination of myth in political discourse. The article argues that the novel’s reflective stance on the role of myth in Israeli society is codependent on the philosophy of language that it develops. To the End of the Land features language acquisition, linguistic interferences with Israel’s main vernacular by other languages, word play and semiotic collapse. Through the presentation of linguistic utterances as contingent, associative, subjective and ever-changing, the identification with biblical narratives is rendered volatile. To the End of the Land questions the limits of Israeli literature in redefining the valence of the language in which it is written as well as the ability of literary texts to reshape major conditions for their own reception: collective memory and national motifs.

scholarly journals AUTENTICITET OG FIKTIONALITET - I JUNOT DÍAZ’ THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO

1970 ◽  
Vol 41 (115) ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Johanne Helbo Bøndergaard
Keyword(s):  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Reading Strategy ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Junot Diaz ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
Hybrid Forms

AUTHENTICITY AND FICTIONALITY | Traditionally literature on historical traumas such as genocide, war and dictatorship has shown careful respect for the extraordinary and tragic nature of the events in question by representing them in soberly realistic, silent or hermetic forms and in authentic testimonies expressing a general sensitivity to the ethical implications of colourful and enjoyable aesthetics. Recently, though, art and literature on memory and history seems to leave behind testimony and the careful performance of silence exploring instead hybrid forms,interaction with visual media, vibrant language and perspectives other than those of the witness and the victim. Junot Díaz’ novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) is one example.The hypothesis explored in this article is that Díaz’ loud and colourful book uses fictionality to counter the silence and oppression of death and dictatorship that is also carefully explored.I argue that the excessive use of “genre” references and magical events explores the limits of authentic representation of historical trauma suggesting instead a reading strategy in which historycan be approached emotionally and critically through the explicit use of fictionality.

scholarly journals (Im) posibilidad de escribir el trauma. El silencio en El profundo Sur de Andrés Rivera

Anclajes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-180
Author(s):  
Cristian Ignacio Vidal Barría ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fictional Narrative ◽  
Current Discussion ◽  
Literary Writing ◽  
A Current

The questions around literary writing and its possibilities for representing violence and historical trauma is a current discussion in both philosophical and literary studies. This article addresses these complexities and examines, through a reading of the novel El profundo Sur (1999) by Argentine writer Andrés Rivera, the possibilities of the literary text as a device that tries to represent or depict violence and trauma through a fictional narrative. The novel takes as its setting and historical reference the massacre of workers in Buenos Aires in 1919, also known as the “Semana Trágica”. Rivera, whose aesthetics is marked by the use of the ellipsis, elaborates a reflection on language, fiction, and the reconstruction of a historical event through literature.

scholarly journals The Representation of Cyprus’s Trauma in Andrea Busfield’s Aphrodite’s War: Conflict or Dialogue?

2017 ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Ingrida Eglė Žindžiuvienė
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Collective Trauma ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Transgenerational Trauma ◽  
Trauma Narrative ◽  
National Trauma ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Trauma Fiction

The aim of this article is to examine the representation of the events in Cyprus in the middle and second half of the twentieth century as depicted in Andrea Busfield’s novel Aphrodite’s War (2010). The article discusses the methods and narrative strategies of disclosing collective trauma and considers the fact-fiction dimension, arguing the presence of it in a trauma narrative. Narrative strategies in trauma fiction are discussed and the author’s approach to the restatement of the national trauma is analysed. It is debated whether the novel can be described as a post-trauma testimony and whether the narrative is constructed on unified memory concepts. Postmemory is viewed within the framework of transgenerational trauma and the role of collective memory in the transmission of trauma is emphasised. Based on the ethical charge of the narrative, the reader’s status in the relationship with a trauma novel is questioned.

scholarly journals Interactions of narrative version and multiple forms of memory In narrations of Zahra Ramij. The narrative group "Anin almaa" is a model. تفاعلات الصيغ السردية وتعدد أشكال اشتغال الذاكرة في سرود الزهرة رميج. المجموعة القصصية _أنين الماء_ أنموذجا

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAOUFIK تــوفــيــق STITI الــســتــيــتــي
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Individual Memory ◽  
Narrative Patterns ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Aesthetic Characteristics ◽  
Narrative Forms

تُعتبر الصيغة السردية إحدى أهم المقولات المشكلة للخطاب السردي عموما، حيث تنتظم السرود وفق نمط حكائي معين يعكس الأسلوب المتفرد والمتميز لكل كاتب على حدة. وتُشَكِّلُ المجموعة القصصية "أنين الماء" للقاصة والروائية والشاعرة المغربية الزهرة رميج، بتعدّد صيغ خطابها وتنوع أشكال اشتغال الذاكرة فيها، كونا مُكثّفا وبالغ التعقيد. حيث تُزاوج القاصّة، في تشكيلٍ إبداعي قشيب، بين المحكي والمعروض تارة، أو تُعَضِّضهُما بالخطاب المُحوّل تارة أخرى، كما تُدمِجُ في صَوْغِ سرودها الذاكرة الفردية والذاكرة الجماعية، وتمزج الذاكرة الاجتماعية بالذاكرةِ الثقافيةِ والسياسيةِ. وسنحاول في هذه الورقةِ تقديم قراءةٍ مُركّزةٍ ومُختصرةٍ، في المجموعة القصصية "أنين الماء" للقاصة والروائية الزهرة رميج، لاستجلاء بعض الخصائص الفنية والجمالية التي تُميِّزُ سرود الكاتبة، مع التركيز بشكل خاص على أنماط الحكي والصِّيَغ السردية وتعدد أشكال اشتغال الذاكرة.The narrative version is one of the most important arguments for the narrative discourse, the narratives are organized according to a specific style of reflection. The novel "Anin almaa" by the Moroccan novelist Zahra Ramej, with its varied forms of speech and the diversity of its forms of memory, is an intensive and highly complex universe. Where the mating is intertwined in a creative form, between the narrator and the viewer, or alternating with the converted discourse. It also integrates the individual memory and the collective memory into its narratives, and mixes the social memory with the cultural and political memory. In this paper, we will attempt to present a concise reading of the novel "Anin Almaa" by Zahra Ramej, to explore some of the artistic and aesthetic characteristics that characterize the writer's narratives, with particular emphasis on narrative patterns, narrative forms and multiple forms of memory.

scholarly journals Everybody’s Holocaust? Tova Reich’s Satirical Approach to Shoah Business and the Cult of Victimhood

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Stanislav Kolář
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
New Millennium

This paper sets out to demonstrate the changes that post-Holocaust fiction has been undergoing since around the turn of the new millennium. It analyzes the highly innovative and often provocative approaches to the Holocaust and its memory found in Tova Reich’s novel My Holocaust—a scathing satire on the personal and institutional exploitation of Holocaust commemoration, manifested in the commodification of the historical trauma in what has been termed “Shoah business”. The novel can be seen as a reaction to the increasing appropriation of the Holocaust by popular culture. This paper focuses on Reich’s critical response to the cult of victimhood and the unhealthy competition for Holocaust primacy, corresponding with the growth of a “victim culture”. It also explores other thematic aspects of the author’s satire—the abuse of the term “Holocaust” for personal, political and ideological purposes; attempts to capitalize on the suffering of millions of victims; the trivialization of this tragedy; conflicts between particularists and universalists in their attitude to the Shoah; and criticism of Holocaust-centered Judaism. The purpose of this paper is to show how Tova Reich has enriched post-Holocaust fiction by presenting a comic treatment of false victimary discourse, embodied by a fraudulent survivor and a whole gallery of inauthentic characters. This paper highlights the novel’s originality, which enables it to step outside the frame of traditional Holocaust fiction.

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