ipl-logo

Cathy Caruth's Unclaimed Experience: A Critical Analysis

806 Words4 Pages

Literary criticism has gained attention in the field of trauma studies after the publication of Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History and Kali Tal’s Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma in 1996 (Balaev, 2014). The early scholarship pointed that the idea of trauma is something that can not be represent for an event (Balaev, 2014). A study of trauma of memory and forgetting, and narrating trauma on The Garden of Evening Mists is conducted by Goh (2013). The author aimed to examine how trauma of memory and forgetting related to one another, and how narrating the trauma can help one heals from the trauma. The study also discussed about the difficulties of narrating the memory, including the trauma. According …show more content…

This concept is adapted from Saegart (1985) and Leon (2009) which they relate it with home (Koh & Leon, 2014). The significance study by these authors is creating a new space for one self can lead to separating self and others. In this study, the authors emphasise that the concept of dwelling is link together with trauma of displacement and dislocation. Home is a place where it makes an individual feel safe, and have sense of belonging (Koh & Leon, 2014). The authors also insert theories such as spaces of heterotopia, and symbolic spaces. Foucault (1986) refers spaces of heterotopia as the space which created by an individual due to s/he does not fit in places (Koh & Leon, 2014). It is a space that does not exist but it gives feeling of existential or belonging (Koh & Leon, 2014). The space is also created by an individual to make an identity for self (Koh & Leon, 2014). For example, in The Garden of Evening Mists, Aritomo created the garden using 'borrowed scenery' which is considered as artificial project. He made the garden as a space for himself. Next, the authors referred to geographer Yi-Fu Tuan who defined symbolic spaces as vision that people create to link human and social facts along with nature just like the garden created by Aritomo (Koh & Leon, 2014). Symbolic spaces sometimes contain religious symbolism (Koh & Leon, 2014). For example, Aritomo made Taoist symbol in his garden to represent harmony. In this study, it can be seen that the authors wanted to deliver that one created space to give self an identity. It can be deduced that if one lose the 'space', it will lead to trauma of trauma of displacement and dislocation. The trauma of displacement and dislocation is not discussed thoroughly in this study as the authors stressed on the spaces that an individual

Show More
Related
796 Words | 4 Pages

The home is generally constructed as a place of ownership, where we feel secure enough to “remove our masks” that we wear when we present ourselves to the rest of the world (293). Our homes often reflect our own or our family’s identity and are indicative of our lifestyles. The stories that are presented in Evicted reveal the intense levels of anxiety and anguish that surround the eviction process due to the nature of how we interact with our homes and the indestructible link that exists between a physical home and

Read More
966 Words | 4 Pages

Home can be a person, a place, or a space with nothing at all. Home is the place or the headspace where you feel the most comfortable, where you are cut off from the thing dragging you down, the space where you feel the most comfortable, but a place where one is enthusiastic about living life. The idea of being surrounded by nothing and still feeling the most fulfilled, finding home in nothingness is explored in the book “Into The Wild” by Jon Krakauer. A book which

Read More
727 Words | 3 Pages

He explains his guilt that “burns like acid in [his] veins” as the leftover feelings from his childhood remain “as though [he] were still concealing the family shame” (744). This descriptive language showcases how deeply and painfully this trauma has been within in as he has made his own life for himself. He saves this for the end of his essay so that he does not pull too much of the audience’s sympathy from other people who made need it “more.” He introduces the topic of physical violence by writing that “[his] own father never beat [them]” (740)—a curious phrase as he goes on to say that the image was so vivid in his mind that it felt tangible and real. There is an emphasis on the absence of physical violence, but also an admittance of how the threat of such can be just as painful and imprint such images on the brain for years to come.

Read More
1680 Words | 7 Pages

This novel illustrates how different people cope with trauma and how this trauma can shape a person's perspective of themselves and others. The trauma from

Read More
1108 Words | 5 Pages

Instead of the traditional and mainstream verbal memoir, David Small chose to confine into an autobiological memoir, Stitches: A Memoir, with a comic medium that details the darkest periods of his childhood as a prelude to healing. Small demonstrates the rough parts of his past that shaped his life and the relationships between himself and his dysfunctional family by encoding these moments into vividly drawn emotions and sensations. Small experienced traumatic things both physical and psychological, yet despite this, he was able to work through it. This way of using graphic text was David’s take on using illustrations as an outlet to deal with traumatic experiences.

Read More
1230 Words | 5 Pages

One’s personal experience, changes their perception of home. Based on those experiences, there’s an evaluation of whether or not it’s considered home or it violated the notion of

Read More
1504 Words | 7 Pages

The novel focuses on coping with the death and horror of war. It also speaks volumes about the true nature of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the never-ending struggle of dealing with it. In the

Read More
264 Words | 2 Pages

In Maxine Maxine’s narrative, “Cherry Bomb”, it openly shows how she uses literary techniques of symbolism, imagery, and allusion to characterize her childhood innocence being destroyed. Maxine uses these literary terms to characterize her childhood memories being destroyed by an incident in the summer. In the narrative, she talks about how it affected her and her perception. She mentions people and objects in her story. Every detail she described was an important factor in her life.

Read More
878 Words | 4 Pages

According

Read More
1264 Words | 6 Pages

To what extent do you believe that psychogenic amnesia is distinct from organic amnesia? Amnesia is the total or partial loss of memory and can affect different types of memory (Madan, 2011). In order to be able to help those with amnesia using the best treatment, the different forms of amnesia need to be understood correctly. In knowing this, the treatment can be designed around the type of amnesia, with the cause, symptoms and ways to help becoming more specific and focused. By studying the diseases and improving our knowledge of the roles that memory plays we can increase our understanding of the brain structures and how the types of memory fit together.

Read More
1242 Words | 5 Pages

Building brings about our relationship between thought and the space we have created. Thinking allows us to become aware of ourselves and our space, our actions are what create this space. The relationship between thought and space is dwelling. We get a sense of dwelling by instilling our being into a particular space. According to Heidegger,

Read More
974 Words | 4 Pages

Frequently, we just pass by people and look down on them since they have no home; but who is to say they don’t have a home? Home is not the house you live in or the country you belong to. It is a place that incites certain feelings and those feeling are what makes a place home. The people on the streets with no “home” may simply find that anywhere in the world is where they call home. Home has two specific set of values that make it more than just a place which are privacy, and safety.

Read More
1447 Words | 6 Pages

Home is My Life Burden Home. An alternative life kept from the outside world. Behind closed doors, it can be filled with tension but others may see happiness. Life outside my home is my escape from the anxiety that’s built from within the walls of what is called my home. But now, it’s not fully a family with just me and my mother.

Read More
624 Words | 3 Pages

Looking on the Internet I came upon article that put a whole new light regarding repressed memories. Scholars like Sigmund Freud believed that repress memories have a detrimental effect on individuals’ lives. Sigmund Freud assumption of repressed memories can have a negative influence on behavior and mental health, but this article, from Time Magazine, discusses the benefits of repressed memories (Sifferlin, A, 2014). The article was based off a team effort of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and University of Cambridge Behavioral and Clinical Neuroscience base out of Cambridge England did a study try to examine how suppression affect a memory’s unconscious influence people.

Read More
1560 Words | 7 Pages

II. LITERATURE REVIEW The literature review will be reviewed the relevant literature and internet sources, the conceptual of public spaces and community spaces as well as the report of public space and social interaction in order to make a theoretical frameworks for knowledge and understand the problems of social interaction in modern world, especially in the high-rise building, the most common construction in urban area. 1. Public space – the conceptual delimitations and introduction

Read More

More about Cathy Caruth's Unclaimed Experience: A Critical Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document