Narrative, Insecure Equilibrium and the Imperative to Understand: A Hermeneutics of Woundedness
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.11.18Keywords:
hermeneutics, literary narrative, psychoanalysis, trauma, woundednessAbstract
Addressing trauma as a phenomenon which happens on the level of the human psyche and body, this article explores the impact of the interlocking nature of human lingual and bodily being in discovering a fuller possibility of interpreting and understanding woundedness. The non-transparent and problematic character of trauma calls for a hermeneutic investigation in order to gain a far-reaching insight into what happens with us and in us in traumatic experience(s). The imperative to understand the situation of affliction is an unending task which not only relies upon extant understandings but continually pro-vokes new ones. I argue that the process of healing, encompassing the spoken and bodily narrative, does not establish a secure equilibrium, but rather searches for self-restoring, healing energy and commences ever new understandings of what needs to be comprehended and healed. This article offers an examination of trauma as featured in three short stories by British authors: Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce, to exemplify the possibilities of literature to shed light on the intricate nature of traumatic experience. It interrogates the ways in which literature, hermeneutics and psychoanalysis meaningfully converge.
Downloads
References
Becket, Fiona. The Complete Critical Guide to D. H. Lawrence. Routledge, 2005. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203994566 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203994566
Caruth, Cathy, editor. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. John Hopkins UP, 1995.
Caruth, Cathy. “Trauma, Silence, Survival.” Acts of Narrative, edited by Carol Jacobs and Henry Sussman, Stanford UP, 2003, pp. 47–61. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503620537-005
Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. John Hopkins UP, 2016.
Cixous, Hélène. The Exile of James Joyce. John Calder, 1976.
Cowan, James C. D. H. Lawrence: Self and Sexuality. Ohio State UP, 2002.
Davey, Nicholas. “Lived Experience. Erlebnis and Erfahrung.” The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics, edited by Chris Lawn and Niall Keane, John Wiley & Sons, 2016, pp. 326–41. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118529812.ch38 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118529812.ch38
Denborough, David. Trauma: Narrative Responses to Traumatic Experience. Dulwich Centre, 2006.
Einhaus, Ann-Marie. The Short Story and the First World War. Cambridge UP, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139814898 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139814898
Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 17, translated and edited by James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud, assisted by Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson, Vintage, 2001, pp. 217–56.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “Boundaries of Language.” Language and Linguisticality in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics, edited by Lawrence Kennedy Schmidt, Lexington, 2000, pp. 9–17.
García-Rivera, Alejandro R. A Wounded Innocence: Sketches for a Theology of Art. The Liturgical, 2003.
Hołda, Małgorzata. “The Hermeneutics of Conversation; Silence, Epiphany, and the Irreducibility of Conversion.” Roczniki Humanistyczne, vol. LVI, 2016, pp. 157–68. https://doi.org/10.18290/rh.2016.64.11-10 DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh.2016.64.11-10
Joyce, James. The Dead. Coyote Canyon, 2008.
Kearney, Richard. “Healing Touch: Hermeneutics of Trauma and Recovery.” Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, 2020, pp. 1–13.
Kearney, Richard. Imagination Now. Rowman and Littlefield, 2019.
Kearney, Richard, and Brian Treanor, editors. Carnal Hermeneutics. Fordham UP, 2015. https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823265886.001.0001 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823265886.001.0001
Keshavarz, Emon. “D. H. Lawrence: ‘The Blind Man’ and the Untranslatable War.” The Modernist Review, https://modernistreviewcouk.wordpress.com/2019/07/30/d-h-lawrence-the-blind-man-and-the-untranslatable-war/ accessed 26 Dec. 2020.
Kipling, Rudyard. “The Gardener.” The Heritage of the Great War, https://greatwar.nl/books/gardener/gardener.html accessed 20 Dec. 2020.
Laub, Doris. “Truth and Testimony: The Process and the Struggle.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, John Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 61–75.
Lawn, Chris. Gadamer: A Guide for the Perplexed. Continuum, 2006.
Lawrence, D. H. “The Blind Man.” The Literature Network, http://www.online-literature.com/dh_lawrence/england-my-england/3/ accessed 28 Nov. 2020.
Levine, Peter A., and Ann Frederick. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences. North Atlantic, 1997.
Maunder, Andrew. The Facts on File Companion to the British Short Story. Infobase, 2007.
May, Charles. The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice. Routledge, 2002.
Orr, Leonard. Joyce, Imperialism and Postcolonialism. Syracuse UP, 2008.
Ragachewskaya, Marina. Desire for Love: The Secret Longings of the Human Heart in D. H. Lawrence’s Works. Cambridge Scholars, 2012.
Sassoon, Siegfried. “The Hero.” Poets.org, https://poets.org/poem/hero accessed 4 Dec. 2020.
Schapiro, Barbara A. D. H. Lawrence and the Paradoxes of Psychic Life. SUNY, 1999.
Schultze, Cornelia. The Battle of the Sexes in D. H. Lawrence’s Prose, Poetry and Paintings. Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2001.
Selingmann, Herbert J. D. H. Lawrence. An American Interpretation. Haskell, 1924.
Shakespeare, William. The Works of William Shakespeare; Twelfth Night or What you will. Macmillan, 1894.
The Bible. Official King James Bible Online: Authorized King James Version (KJV), https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org accessed 20 Dec. 2020.
“Touch.” Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/word/touch accessed 3 Dec. 2020.
Vickroy, Laurie. Reading Trauma Narratives: The Contemporary Novel and the Psychology of Oppression. U of Virginia P, 2015.
Wierciński, Andrzej. Existentia Hermeneutica. Understanding as the Mode of Being in the World. LIT Verlag, 2019.
Wierciński, Andrzej. Hermeneutics of Education. Exploring and Experiencing the Unpredictability of Education. LIT Verlag, 2019.
Wright, T. R. D. H. Lawrence and the Bible. Cambridge UP, 2000.
Yalom, Irving. Understanding Group Psychotherapy. U of California Extension, 2000.
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
