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.