Narrating Trauma
Judith Butler on Narrative Coherence and the Politics of Self-Narration
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12648917 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kurt Borg (0000-0002-9747-1508, University of Staffordshire, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 447-465 |
| Publication date | 2018-07-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Life Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1448-4528 • E-ISSN: 1751-2964 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14484528.2018.1475056 |
| OpenAlex | W2810514209 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 36 |
Narrative coherence is considered as paramount within various dominant discourses, and is seen as empowering traumatised individuals by giving them more control over their lives. However, when subjected to closer scrutiny, the possibility of narrative coherence in life writing becomes open to critique on multiple levels. The article turns to the work of Judith Butler to show how her account of vulnerable subjectivity and relationality problematises the possibility of the subject’s giving a coherent narrative account of itself. Butler’s ideas can be seen as incompatible with or unable to explain the need for narrative coherence expressed by various trauma survivors. Rather than undermine any notion of narrative coherence, this article argues that Butler’s account of self-narration challenges the over-emphasis placed on a conception of self-narration based on mastery, unity and coherence. The article turns to the narratives of sexual trauma by Alice Sebold and Susan Brison to show how narrative coherence functions in legal and political contexts of testifying as a possibly hegemonic norm that circumscribes how trauma is narrated by facilitating certain forms of self-narration while silencing other forms of narrating oneself. The article concludes by arguing that a reading of Butler’s work on self-narration in relation to insights derived from trauma theory on the difficulties of narrating life after trauma enables a critical ethico-political analysis of hegemonic norms and practices that are currently operating on the activity of traumatic life writing
Aesthetics · Art · Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy · Epistemology · Hegemony · Literature · Narrative · Physics · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Scrutiny · Sociology · Subjectivity · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
Remembering and Anticipating Precarity
Survivor Memory and Rape Memoir
The Myth of ‘Wound’ Writing
Building Belonging through Art with Young Migrants Living in Care in South Africa
Discipline and Commoditize
Progress, emancipation, hope
Child Sexual Abuse, Alcohol and Other Drug use and the Criminal Justice System
Healing the Collective Grief
About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self
The Limits of Autobiography
Narrative and Psychotherapy
Against Narrativity
The Problem of Narrative Coherence
Introducing narrative psychology
Narrative Truth and Historical Truth
The Wounded Storyteller
After Virtue
Remembering Relationality
Butler and Ethics
Aftermath
Feminists Rethink the Self
Giving an Account of Oneself
Trauma and the Memory of Politics
Undoing Gender
Telling Sexual Stories
Giving an Account of Oneself
Subjectivity and illness narratives
Narrative and Self-Concept
Formulating narrative psychology
Still Loved by the Sun
Narration in the Psychoanalytic Dialogue
Subversive Stories and Hegemonic Tales
Time and Narrative, Volume 1
Sexual Difference and Collective Identities
Survivor Discourse
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,33 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |