Trauma and the postmodern witness

• Main Author: Ong, Nicole Sihui
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Literature
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/59384
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The attempt to bear witness to testimonies of trauma is the paradox of describing something that exists outside of language with language. Since a traumatic experience is characterised by its inability to be narrated, integrated, into a survivor’s known frameworks, the challenge lies in discovering a form of witnessing that regards but does not negate the otherness of trauma. This thesis argues that the features of postmodern fiction writing render it an appropriate form for bearing witness to trauma testimonies. Postmodern fiction’s self-reflexivity over the metaphorical nature of language, suspicion toward metanarrative and attention to the form of storytelling prevents primary witnesses from using their language to claim knowledge about the survivor’s traumatic experience. Instead, these texts pose themselves as questions, not answers, to the world to which they testify. In turn, the form of postmodern fiction prevents those who read these texts – the secondary witnesses of the trauma survivor’s testimony – from imposing themselves upon the silence of trauma. Rather, this form positions readers to regard the alterity of trauma in an ethical manner.