Trauma, discourse and communicative limits

Dados Bibliográficos

ID5844136
AutoresMichael Pickering (0000-0002-8085-3673, Loughborough University), Emily Keightley (0000-0001-5276-9506, Loughborough University)
Ano2009
Volume6
Fascículo4
Páginas237-249
Data de publicação2009-09-23
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCritical Discourse Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1740-5904 • E-ISSN: 1740-5912
EditoraRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17405900903180970
OpenAlexW2073083993
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8
Referências citadas20

Trauma is a term that is widely used in memory studies, along with a number of other academic fields and disciplines. This article takes issue with its loose and indiscriminate application. Such application generates an unresolved paradox: trauma is associated with memories of events that are uncontrollable, yet large-scale commemorative practices or processes of social reconciliation assume that experiences of these are controllable, amenable to being assimilated into narrative form and so available for rhetorical purposes. Following an examination of this paradox, the article looks in detail at two examples of experience involving painful memories of two kinds - those which have become integrated into relatively easily told stories, and which can then involve rhetorical work, and those which have not become woven into a life-narrative and so are not available for such work. The article also considers some of the methodological and analytical problems that occur when traumatic or painful memories arise in the course of sociological fieldwork. Keywords: traumapainmemoryhistorynarrativelife-storyrhetoric Notes For valuable discussion and application of the term in memory studies, see Antze and Lambek Citation(1996), Bennett and Kennedy Citation(2003), Caruth (Citation1995, Citation1996), Felman and Laub Citation(1992), La Capra (Citation1994, Citation1999, Citation2001) and Tal Citation(1996). Jacobs (Citation2008, p. 211) refers to 'traumatised societies' in an article on the representation of women at Auschwitz, and Zylinska (Citation2005, p. 76) talks of 'screen trauma' in discussing the media theatricalisation of the events of 9/11. We use the term metaphor here as a meta-category to include such figures of speech as metonym, synecdoche, simile, allegory and symbol, as well as metaphor as a more specific device of comparative substitution. There are other cases where the applicability of psychological and/or psychoanalytic terms for collective experiences and memories should be called into question and interrogated. These are beyond the bounds of the present article. Interviewees were selected through networks of contacts initially established through local reading groups. Interviews were based on the theme of remembering in everyday life and were unstructured, lasting for one to two hours. They were transcribed verbatim and themes were identified across the interviews. Transcripts were broken into thematic groupings, including the descriptions of painful episodes in life stories. The two segments of transcript selected for this article were then subjected to linguistic and narrative analysis, attending to the organisation of the talk as well as the content, in order to assess the ways in which meaning was discursively constructed by the speaker (or not). Particular attention was paid to such discursive features as repetition, disjointed sentences and the confusion of tenses, which signalled difficulty in communicating because of the pain experienced in the past. For guides to narrative analysis, see Kohler Riessman (Citation1993, Citation2008) and Elliott Citation(2005

Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics