We'll find the time: Performing traumatic hope through fictions of child maltreatment
Abstract
What are the methods used to constitute citizens in colonialist regimes? How do we more fully appreciate the links among trauma theory, Holocaust studies, and postcolonial criticism? This can most effectively take place when we recognize the ways we ourselves, when we were children, may have been constituted within similar conditions of violence. When we attend more closely to what is inscribed in the narratives which foreground a child's body as the site of violence, we recognize what literary artists such as Caryl Churchill, Toni Morrison, Flannery O’Connor, and L.M. Montgomery are performing through fictions of child maltreatment. They, along with characters and readers, are providing empathetic witness to trauma testimony which is being offered and received.
Degree
M.A.
Advisors
Punday, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Literature
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