HENA01143U Engelsk - Valgfag 3: (A)dressing the Wound: on contemporary trauma writing

Kursusbeskrivelsen dækker både Valgfag 3, emne og Valgfag 3, sprogfærdighed, idet begge er integreret i et undervisningsforløb.
Den studerende vælger ét blandt de udbudte kurser inden for de tre geografisk bestemte områder amerikanske studier, postkoloniale studier, britisk litteratur, historie og samfundsforhold eller sprogvidenskab


A)dressing the Wound: a selection of contemporary trauma novels

In this course we will discuss a selection of contemporary fiction which re-explores histories of victimhood and oppression from the textually therapeutic approach offered by trauma-studies. As Cathy Caruth argues in her seminal work Unclaimed Experience (1996), the voicing or representation of trauma in writing is always in conflict with the simultaneous urge in the traumatised individual to both forget and remember. The ‘telling’ of traumatic experience annihilates order and continuity in representation and destabilises referential meaning as the traumatic impact has blocked full access to language. We will look at how contemporary fiction processes traumatic experiences in the attempt to ‘represent the un-representable’ through an experimentation with genre and narrative technique.