Type of Document Master's Thesis Author Griffin, Brett Thomas Author's Email Address grifgrounder@gmail.com URN etd-11192008-155504 Title Can the Wound Be Taken at Its Word?: Performed Trauma in Don DeLillo's The Body Artist and Falling Man Degree Master of Arts Department English Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Dr. Chris Kocela Committee Chair Dr. Marilynn Richtarik Committee Member Dr. Nancy Chase Committee Member Keywords
- The wound
- Traumatic representation
- Performed trauma
- Trauma studies
- Trauma
- DeLillo
Date of Defense 2008-11-18 Availability unrestricted Abstract Two of Don DeLillo’s recently published novels, The Body Artist (2001) and Falling Man (2007), feature performance artists performing trauma. Through the bodies of these performers, DeLillo restates the central concern of trauma studies: if trauma is that which denies mediation, how may we speak about traumatic experience? DeLillo’s stagings of traumatic (re)iterations illustrate how the missed originary moment of trauma precludes directly referential content in traumatic representation. But I propose that performed trauma – the knowledge of forgetting addressed to another – recapitulates the structure of traumatic experience itself, thereby revealing trauma to be wholly constituted in repetition, and providing a means of speaking about the unspeakable. I hope to illustrate how restoring trauma to language revives the ethical and political efficacy of traumatic representation.Files
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