Writing Wounds: The Inscription of Trauma in Post-1968 French Women's Life-Writing (Genus 4) (Genus: Gender in Modern Culture)

In the last decade, the question of how trauma is remembered and narrated has become increasingly crucial in literary studies and in psychotherapy. Writing Wounds rethinks the relation between trauma, memory and narrative through readings of key fictional, autobiographical and "autofictional" texts by recent French women writers: Marie Cardinal, Chantal Chawaf, Hélène Cixous, Charlotte Delbo, Béatrice de Jurquet and Sarah Kofman. By drawing on and also interrogating recent theories of trauma, this study shows that trauma is inscribed in writing through recurring images of the body and of bodily wounding that mark the limits and possibilities of narrativisation. This book has a double aim: to offer new readings of texts by modern French women writers and to rethink the crucial question of how narratives of trauma are to be read. Writing Wounds will be of interest to researchers working on trauma, modern French literature, women’s writing or "life-writing" as well as to a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses on trauma and narrative. In the last decade, the question of how trauma is remembered and narrated has become increasingly crucial in literary studies and in psychotherapy. Writing Wounds rethinks the relation between trauma, memory and narrative through readings of key fictional, autobiographical and autofictional texts by recent French women writers: Marie Cardinal, Chantal Chawaf, Helene Cixous, Charlotte Delbo, Beatrice de Jurquet and Sarah Kofman. By drawing on and also interrogating recent theories of trauma, this study shows that trauma is inscribed in writing through recurring images of the body and of bodily wounding that mark the limits and possibilities of narrativisation. This book has a double aim: to offer new readings of texts by modern French women writers and to rethink the crucial question of how narratives of trauma are to be read." Contents......Page 10 Preface: Writing Wounds......Page 12 Introduction: The Story of Trauma in “Trauma Theory”......Page 18 Hysterical Heroines: From “Dora” to Marie Cardinal’s Les Mots pour le dire and Autrement dit......Page 38 Writing (through) the body: Hélène Cixous’s Dedans and “Stigmata”......Page 62 “Perdre pied”: The Inscription of Sexual Abuse in Béatrice de Jurquet’s Autobiographical Fiction......Page 86 Chantal Chawaf’s Le Manteau noir: Survival, Departure and Bearing Witness......Page 110 Choking on Words: Sarah Kofman’s Autobiographical Writings......Page 134 Ghost-writing the Holocaust: Charlotte Delbo’s Auschwitz et après......Page 158 Conclusion: Re-Reading the Wound......Page 184 Works Cited......Page 192 Wounds Rethinks The Relation Between Trauma Memory And Narrative Through Readings Of Key Fictional, Autobiographical And Autofictional Texts By Recent French Women Writers.--book Jacket. Kathryn Robson. Rev. Version Of Author's Dissertation. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [191]-197). In Freud's accounts of hysteria, hysterics do not tell their own stories, but perform their unspoken narratives through or across the body in the form of somatic symptoms.