Trauma studies, an area of cultural investigation that came to prominence in the early-to-mid-1990s, prides itself on its explicit commitment to ethics, which sets it apart from the poststructuralist criticism of the 1970s and early 1980s in which it has its roots. Standing accused of irrelevance or indifference to "real-world" issues such as history, politics, and ethics because of its predominantly epistemological focus, this earlier, "textualist" paradigm was largely eclipsed around the mid-1980s by overtly historicist or culturalist approaches, including new historicism, cultural materialism, cultural studies, and various types of advocacy criticism (feminist, lesbian and gay, Marxist, and postcolonial). Trauma studies can with some justification be regarded as the reinvention in an ethical guise of this much maligned textualism. Cathy Caruth, one of the leading figures in trauma studies (along with Shoshana Felman, Geoffrey Hartman, and Dominick LaCapra), counters the oft-heard critique of poststructuralism outlined above by arguing that, rather than leading us away from history and into "political and ethical paralysis" (Unclaimed 10), a textualist approach can afford us unique access to history. Indeed, it makes possible a "rethinking of reference," which aims not at "eliminating history" but at "resituating it in our understanding, that is, at permitting history to arise where immediate understanding may not" (11). By bringing the insights of deconstructive and psychoanalytic scholarship to the analysis of cultural artifacts that bear witness to traumatic histories, critics can gain access to extreme events and experiences that defy understanding and representation. Caruth insists on the ethical significance of this critical practice. She claims that "the language of trauma, and the silence of its mute repetition of suffering, profoundly and imperatively demand" a "new mode of reading and of listening" (9) that would allow us to pass out of the isolation imposed on both individuals and cultures by traumatic experience. In "a catastrophic age" such as ours, according to Caruth, "trauma itself may provide the very link between cultures" ("Trauma" 11). With trauma forming a bridge between disparate historical experiences, so the argument goes, listening to the trauma of another can contribute to cross-cultural solidarity and to the creation of new forms of community. Remarkably, however, trauma studies' stated commitment to the promotion of cross-cultural ethical engagement is not borne out by the founding texts of the field (including Caruth's own work), which are almost exclusively concerned with traumatic experiences of white Westerners and solely employ critical methodologies emanating from a Euro-American context. (1) Instead of promoting solidarity between different cultures, trauma studies risks producing the very opposite effect as a result of this one-sided focus: by ignoring or marginalizing non-Western traumatic events and histories and non-Western theoretical work, trauma studies may actually assist in the perpetuation of Eurocentric views and structures that maintain or widen the gap between the West and the rest of the world. If, as Caruth argues, "history is precisely the way we are implicated in each other's traumas" (Unclaimed 24), then Western traumatic histories must be seen to be tied up with histories of colonial trauma for trauma studies to be able to redeem its promise of ethical effectiveness. Attempts to give the suffering engendered by colonial oppression its "traumatic due" have begun to be made in various disciplines in recent years. Mental health professionals, for example, are becoming increasingly aware of the need to acknowledge traumatic experiences in non-Western settings and to take account of cultural differences in the treatment of trauma. These concerns are reflected in the titles of two recent collections of essays: Trauma and Dissociation in a Cross-Cultural Perspective: Not Just a North American Phenomenon (2006) and Honoring Differences: Cultural Issues in the Treatment of Trauma and Loss (1999). …

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Introduction: postcolonial trauma novels

This article seeks to contribute to contemporary discussions on the work- ings of cultural memory and examines in particular the way in which literary texts can function as a social framework for memory. Through a detailed study of the genesis, composition, and long-term reception of Walter Scott's The Heart of Midlothian (1982 (1818)), I argue that literary texts play a variety of roles in the formation of cultural memory and that these roles are linked to their status as public discourse, to their fictional and poetical qualities, and to their longevity. This analysis of the multiple roles of literary texts in what I call ''memorial dynamics'' sheds light on the complex communicative processes by which images of the past are formed and transformed over time. It indicates the need to consider discontinuity as a feature of memorial dynamics and to recognize, for better or for worse, that fictionality and poeticity are an integral and not merely ''inauthentic'' feature of cultural memory.

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Portable Monuments: Literature, Cultural Memory, and the Case of Jeanie Deans

Acknowledgements Contents Introduction 1. Portable Monuments 2. Procreativity: remediation and Rob Roy 3. Re-scripting Ivanhoe 4. Re-enacting Ivanhoe 5. Locating memory: Abbotsford 6. Commemorating Scott: 'that imperial man' 7. How long was immortality? Epilogue: Cultural memory, cultural amnesia Notes References List of illustrations Index of Names

The Afterlives of Walter Scott: Memory on the Move

For Leave voters the Brexit referendum of 23 June 2016 was invested with hopes and dreams, of refound sovereignty and control, freedom and liberty, subjectivity and agency. Brexit was an opportunit...

/pdf/brexit-populism-and-fantasies-of-fulfilment-vdlon1u83f.pdf

Brexit populism and fantasies of fulfilment

The article revises contemporary Spanish and Galician literary history and proposes a postnational critique of the Spanish canons (Spanish, Galician, Basque, etc.), which continue to be monolingual and therefore nationalist. By studying the work of Pardo Bazan, the article argues that even when the work of a writer is fully assimilated into a specific canon (the state canon of Spanish literature written in Spanish), the traces of the other language and geography (Galicia/n) remain and, from their marginality, continue to define and defer her 'originary identity and language' – Galician – which cannot be captured or canonized in nationalist terms; neither Galician nor Spanish. The article concludes that Pardo Bazan's 'identity' and language, which are translational and transnational, point to a new geography that defies the (Spanish) state and therefore posits the secondary nature of any state reappropriation as the departure point for any new postnational history of literature.El articulo examina las hist...

Towards a Postnational History of Galician Literature: On Pardo Bazán's Transnational and Translational Position

Linda Hutcheon says that this article is a dialogue that was initially provoked by some ruminations on her part over why she had resolutely insisted that the postmodern was more ironic than nostalgic. This dialogue with Mario Valdes represents her attempt to deal with this unfinished business to try to understand why she had earlier chosen the nostalgic dimension of the postmodern in favor of the ironic. It also represents Valdes response to this position and his critical testing of it on the field of contemporary Spanish cinema.

Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern: A Dialogue

Preface: Theorizing Literary History in Dialogue 1. Rethinking the National Model 2. Rethinking Literary History and Racial Memory 3. Rethinking the History of Literary History 4. Rethinking the Scale of Literary History 5. Rethinking the Colonial Model Afterword: A Personal Response

Rethinking literary history : a dialogue on theory

Volume 1: Configurations of Literary Culture in Latin America 1. Geographic Factors and the Formation of Cultural Terrain for Literary Production. Demographics and the Formation of Cultural Centers 2. Linguistic Diversity of Latin American Literary Cultures 3. History of the Production of Literary Cultures in Colonial Latin America 4. Access and Participation in the Literary Cultures of Latin America Volume 2: Institutional Modes and Cultural Modalities of Literature in Latin America 1. Configurations of Socioeconomic, Racial, and Ethnic Alterity in Literary History 2. Gender and Sexual Orientation in the Historical Formation of the Cultural Imaginary Volume 3: Latin American Literature: Subject to History 1. Religious, Scientific, and Political Discourses 2. Orality and Literature 3. The Multiplicity and Diversity of Discourses and Theatricalities 4. Transformations in Popular Culture 5. Cinema: Cultural Dialogues and the Process of Modernity

Literary cultures of Latin America : a comparative history

Permission to reproduce this material was obtained from the original publisher, the American Council of Learned Societies. Please contact them directly for permission to reproduce.

Rethinking literary history - comparatively

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Mario J. Valdés

Papers

Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern: A Dialogue

Rethinking literary history : a dialogue on theory

Literary cultures of Latin America : a comparative history

Rethinking literary history - comparatively

Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern: A Dialogue