Event overview
Goldsmiths Literature Seminar
Rachel Thompson (Goldsmiths):
'Metaphors of Return: Trauma and History in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory'
This paper posits via a close reading of Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat’s novel Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) that the African/Caribbean diasporic preoccupation with returning to the Caribbean, the site of historical and ancestral trauma, is symptomatic of a victim of trauma whose mind is dominated by the traumatic experience which refuses to be relegated to the realm of the past. In bringing to the fore Jan Carew’s hypothesis that Caribbean people carry the traumatic memory of the ancestral crossing in the slave era in their unconscious minds (‘The Caribbean Writer and Exile’, 1978) I contend that the memory of ancestral slavery in the New World is present in the form of inherited, or, to borrow Aleida Assmann’s turn of phrase, ‘transgenerational memory’ (‘History, Memory and the Genre of Testimony’, 2006).
As victims of trauma, Danticat’s characters navigate return journeys to places on the island which are emblematic of these traumatic experiences. How do these return journeys reveal the way in which memory of traumatic ancestral experience continues to haunt, or possess, the contemporary Caribbean psyche? In addressing this central question my analysis will draw on Cathy Caruth’s work on trauma and memory (Trauma: Explorations in Memory, 1995) whilst exploring Danticat’s depiction of the Haitian traumatic past in the present. I will focus on the motif of the cane field as a link between past and present, ancestral and contemporary traumas, discussing the motif’s historic symbolism as a reminder of a traumatic history, colonial slavery and the lasting effects of the plantation economy.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 24 Jan 2013 | 6:30pm - 8:00pm |
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