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Se kép, se hang? A trauma képi narrativitásának kérdése W. G. Sebald Austerlitz című regényében
78–88.Views:105Sebald’s novel Austerlitz can be considered a „trauma novel” not only for a narratological reason (that is, because it reflects upon the non-representability of trauma on the level of words), but also because it reveals the impossibility of depicting a past memory with pictures – despite of the fact that both the narrator and the title character are feel impelled to do so. The attitude of the narrator illustrates a phenomenon that the German sociologist Bernhard Giesen describes as the perpetrator’s trauma. According to this theory the individual trauma becomes a collective one in case of the perpetrators. Austerlitz, on the other hand, turns into a medium of the victimes as well. Cultural trauma can also become a part of the personal identity due to certain individuals and media, such as the photography, which is of crucial importance for remembering in the novel. One can describe the sound and picture of the trauma with the term of catachresis. This figure involves the constraint of signifying the non-representability.
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A kulturális trauma elmélete a bírálatok tükrében
36–51.Views:195The present survey aims to overview the criticism on the theory of cultural trauma, as well as to define the specific character of this theorem in the light of its critical judgement. Trauma studies, an interdisciplinary field of humanities has been successful for over two decades and this popularity manifests itself also in the very early emergence of severe criticism. The first wave of critics attacked especially the fact that Shoshana Felman’s and Cathy Caruth’s arguments regard the trauma as a metaphysical centre, as opposed to their point of origin in deconstruction. Because of this defect, Wulf Kansteiner, the fiercest critic considers even the use of the term cultural trauma an ethical delinquency. At this point, however, he himself can be criticised too: he fails to make any conceptual distinctions, based on which one could clearly distinguish between individual, psychic trauma and cultural traumas. In case of an individual trauma the medium is the body, the therapy is the representation, thus the traumatic experience becomes part of another medium. Mediality is an inevitable factor in the interpretation of any trauma, which we can also conclude when taking into consideration other context such as the theory of cultural memory or narratology. Therefore, I finally argue for the integration of the aspect of mediality into trauma-theory.
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Szerkesztői előszó
2–3.Views:90A trauma szó csakis alakzatként kerülhet át olyan tudományterületekre, mint az irodalomtudomány vagy a kultúratudomány. Sőt, a terminust a baleseti sebészettől kölcsönző pszichológia és pszichoanalízis is alakzatokban tudja a saját traumafogalmát meghatározni. A pszichopatológiából vett ismérvek szerint a poszttraumás stressz-zavar (PTSD) egyik jellemzője az elfojtás, mely könnyen párhuzamba állítható a kihagyás alakzatával, egy másik szimptóma, az ismétlés(kényszer) pedig az egyik legalapvetőbb retorikai megoldások közé tartozik. A megfeleltetések sorát lehetne folytatni, de kétségkívül félrevezető következtetésekre is vezethetnek, mint ahogyan a traumadiskurzus nyitányakor, a kilencvenes évek elején a „dekonstruktív” traumaelmélet valóban elkövetett efféle következetlenségeket. Az immár két évtizedre visszatekintő interdiszciplináris bölcsészettudományi irányzat sikere viszont abban is mérhető, hogy viszonylag hamar, egy évtizeden belül megszülettek az ezekre a hibákra rávilágító kritikák is. Ezért tartottuk fontosnak, hogy a traumaelméletet elemzésekben alkalmazó tanulmányokat több, elméleti reflexiókat tárgyaló írás is megelőzze.
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A harctéri idegsokkos katona és az úriasszony különös találkozása: Gender és trauma viszonya Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway című regényében
105–124.Views:111Virginia Woolf ’s novel Mrs Dalloway is regarded as a very important work both in gender and in trauma studies. The present article provides an overview of the cultural history of the interwar period, in order to answer the question why the modernist novel used to be the only possible forum for public talking about trauma at that time. Modernist literature and the rhetoric of the trauma most probably have a lot in common and these analogies become apparent when studying the reception history of Mrs Dalloway. My close reading of the novel works not only within the framework of trauma studies but I also intend to operate with new theoretical contexts, such as the poetics of metamorphoses and theories on the social construction of time regimes. The two protagonists of the novel, Clarissa and Septimus never meet in the story, yet one may perceive a certain communication between them, enabled by the feeling of empathy. Empathy can, as I finally conclude on the basis of the poetics of the novel, temporarily function as a substitute transcendence in the age of modernity.