Trauma of Violence and Displacement in Literature: A Theoretical Perspective

In the contemporary world of social, religious and racial confrontations, the application of trauma theory has got a new relevance which is significant not only in Medical Sciences but also in Humanities. From the ancient notion of trauma as an external physical injury, the term got changed its definition to a morbid psychical condition essentially related to human mind. When an individual faces series of tragic events as part of social, religious or racial confrontations, it leaves a permanent wound in the human psyche which makes him or her mentally lost and disconnected. The psychological responses to such traumatic incidents happen in an uncontrolled way where repetitive intrusive memory of events, hallucinations and dreams become an everyday phenomenon. Over the centuries, the history of mankind has faced several tragic events including wars and genocides that shocked and tormented their psyche for decades resulting in traumatic psychosis. Since literature is the mirror of the era in which it is written, it has no escape from depicting these tragic events as well through both fictional and non-fictional narratives. Moreover, these narratives offer the readers an alternate reading of history that had been neglected by official historiography. This fictionalization of events from history offers the psychological reading of characters, their mental responses to such tragic events, and It's traumatic after effects through applying trauma theory.Keywords: Trauma, memory, script therapy, displacement, exile, violence.Trauma study is an umbrella term that comprises psychoanalysis, cultural studies, post-structuralism, philosophy and history. Though American Psychiatric Association first included Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as an illness in 1980, Freud’s work with hysterical women were clearly its historical antecedents. The essential impetus provided by Freud in the field of Trauma has now been extended by theories such as New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, Post-colonialism, Marxism and Cultural Studies. The contemporary Trauma theory was developed in early 1990s by Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman and Geoffrey Hartman, a group of academicians from the USA. They were the disciples of deconstruction theorist Paul de Man at Yale University. Their research in the field has drastically changed the relationship between literature and trauma. The impact of this development is so immense in such a way that it established trauma theory as an important branch in literary studies. Moreover, a new genre of trauma fiction has been developed in the field which attempts to represent trauma through literary devices and techniques such as flashbacks and repetition.