The Art and Science of Trauma and the Autobiographical: Negotiated Truths (Palgrave Studies in Life Writing)

This book examines posttraumatic autobiographical projects, elucidating the complex relationship between the ‘science of trauma’ (and how that idea is understood across various scientific disciplines), and the rhetorical strategies of fragmentation, dissociation, reticence and repetitive troping widely used the representation of traumatic experience. From autobiographical fictions to prison poems, from witness testimony to autography, and from testimonio to war memorials, otherwise dissimilar projects speak of past suffering through a limited and even predictable discourse in search of healing. Drawing on approaches from literary, human rights and cultural studies that highlight relations between trauma, language, meaning and self-hood, and the latest research on the science of trauma from the fields of clinical, behavioral and evolutionary psychology and neuroscience, I read such autobiographical projects not as ‘symptoms’ but as complex interrogative negotiations of trauma and its aftermath: commemorative and performative narratives navigating aesthetic, biological, cultural, linguistic and emotional pressure and inspiration. This book examines posttraumatic autobiographical projects, elucidating the complex relationship between the "science of trauma" (and how that idea is understood across various scientific disciplines), and the rhetorical strategies of fragmentation, dissociation, reticence and repetitive troping widely used the representation of traumatic experience. From autobiographical fictions to prison poems, from witness testimony to autography, and from testimony to war memorials, otherwise dissimilar projects speak of past suffering through a limited and even predictable discourse in search of healing. Drawing on approaches from literary, human rights and cultural studies that highlight relations between trauma, language, meaning and self-hood, and the latest research on the science of trauma from the fields of clinical, behavioral and evolutionary psychology and neuroscience, the author reads such autobiographical projects not as "symptoms" but as complex interrogative negotiations of trauma and its aftermath: commemorative and performative narratives navigating aesthetic biological, cultural, linguistic and emotional pressure and inspiration Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii The Negotiated Truth (Meg Jensen)....Pages 1-28 Valuing the Witness: Typologies of Testimony (Meg Jensen)....Pages 29-71 Time, Body, Memory: The Staged Moment in Posttraumatic Letters, Journals, Essays, and Memoirs (Meg Jensen)....Pages 73-113 What It Is Like: Fiction, Fear, and Narratives of Feeling in Posttraumatic Autobiographical Novels (Meg Jensen)....Pages 115-151 Speaking In and Speaking Out: Posttraumatic Poetry and Autography (Meg Jensen)....Pages 153-199 Annihilation and Integration in Collective Posttraumatic Monuments, Testimonies, and Literary Texts (Meg Jensen)....Pages 201-245 The Art and Science of Therapeutic Innovation: Hope for PTSD Sufferers Today and Tomorrow (Meg Jensen)....Pages 247-286 Back Matter ....Pages 287-299