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This dissertation investigates how different stakeholders have competed over the interpretation and commemoration of the Aum Affair. The Aum Affair was a series of crimes committed by new religious movement Aum Shinrikyō between 1988 and 1995, which culminated in the gassing of the Tokyo subway system using sarin in March 1995. The Tokyo attack was the largest act of terrorism in post-war Japan. I combine qualitative methods of media analysis, interviews, and participant observation to analyse how different stakeholders have narrated and commemorated the Aum Affair. I propose ‘collective trauma’ as a revised theory of ‘cultural trauma’ to describe an event which is represented as harmful and indelible to collective memory and identity. In contrast to ‘cultural trauma’, which stresses the importance of symbolic representations of traumatic events, ‘collective trauma’ considers other ‘material’ processes – such as establishing facts, collective action, state responses, and litigation – which also contribute to trauma construction. My overarching argument is that various stakeholders – including state authorities, mass media, public intellectuals, victims, and former Aum believers – have constructed the Aum Affair as a collective trauma in multiple and conflicting ways. Many media representations situated Aum as an evil ‘cult’ which ‘brainwashed’ believers and intended to take over Japan through terror. State authorities also responded by treating Aum as a dangerous terrorist group. In some instances, these binary representations of Japan locked in a struggle against an evil force led to municipal governments violating the civil rights of Aum believers. Some individuals such as public intellectuals and former believers have challenged this divisive view by treating Aum as a ‘religion’, not a ‘cult’, and locating the root causes of Aum’s growth in Japanese society. Additionally, victims and former members have pursued divergent goals such as retributive justice, financial reparations, and social reconciliation through their public actions. A key conclusion of this dissertation is that whilst confronting horrific acts of violence may require social construction of collective trauma using cultural codes of good and evil, the entrenchment of these symbolic categories can result in lasting social tension and division.

<p>Pat Barker’s fictional account of the Great War, The Regeneration Trilogy, completed in 1995, is considered to be her most important work to date and has captured the imagination of the reading public as well as attracting considerable scholarly attention. Although the trilogy appears to be written in the realistic style of the traditional historical novel, Barker approaches the past with certain preoccupations from 1990s Britain and rewrites the past as seen through these contemporary lenses. Consequently, the trilogy illustrates not only how the past returns to haunt the present, but also how the present reciprocally haunts perceptions of the past. The haunting quality of the trilogy is developed through an extensive, intricate pattern of intertextuality. This reciprocal haunting at times breaks the realistic framework of the narrative, giving rise to anachronisms.</p><p>This study offers a reading of trauma, class, gender and psychology as thematic areas where intertexts are activated, allowing Barker to revise and re-accentuate stories of the past. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of discourse and Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue, it focuses on the trilogy as an interactive link in an intertextual chain of communication about the Great War. Received versions of history are confirmed, expanded on and sometimes questioned. What is innovative about the trilogy is how Barker incorporates discursive formations not only from the Great War period, but from the whole twentieth century. The Great War is regenerated and transformed as it passes from one dialogic context to another. My reading shows that the trilogy presents social structures from different historical epochs through dialogism and diachronicity, making the present-day matrices of power and knowledge that continue to surround, determine and limit people’s lives highly visible. The Regeneration Trilogy regenerates the past, simultaneously confirming Barker’s claim that the historical novel can also be “a backdoor into the present”.</p>

Pat Barker’s fictional account of the Great War, The Regeneration Trilogy, completed in 1995, is considered to be her most important work to date and has captured the imagination of the reading public as well as attracting considerable scholarly attention. Although the trilogy appears to be written in the realistic style of the traditional historical novel, Barker approaches the past with certain preoccupations from 1990s Britain and rewrites the past as seen through these contemporary lenses. Consequently, the trilogy illustrates not only how the past returns to haunt the present, but also how the present reciprocally haunts perceptions of the past. The haunting quality of the trilogy is developed through an extensive, intricate pattern of intertextuality. This reciprocal haunting at times breaks the realistic framework of the narrative, giving rise to anachronisms. This study offers a reading of trauma, class, gender and psychology as thematic areas where intertexts are activated, allowing Barker to revise and re-accentuate stories of the past. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of discourse and Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of dialogue, it focuses on the trilogy as an interactive link in an intertextual chain of communication about the Great War. Received versions of history are confirmed, expanded on and sometimes questioned. What is innovative about the trilogy is how Barker incorporates discursive formations not only from the Great War period, but from the whole twentieth century. The Great War is regenerated and transformed as it passes from one dialogic context to another. My reading shows that the trilogy presents social structures from different historical epochs through dialogism and diachronicity, making the present-day matrices of power and knowledge that continue to surround, determine and limit people’s lives highly visible. The Regeneration Trilogy regenerates the past, simultaneously confirming Barker’s claim that the historical novel can also be “a backdoor into the present”.

La thématique de l’esclavage aux États-Unis nous a toujours interpellés, interrogés et nous a toujours donné envie d’en savoir plus et de comprendre comment un tel système a pu perdurer pendant plus de deux cents ans, provoquer la division profonde d’une nation et une guerre civile pour finalement laisser des traces et des marques indélébiles sur les États-Unis. Cet intérêt nous a poussés à nous intéresser tout d’abord à la notion du traumatisme culturel de l’esclavage, puis, à sa représentation cinématographique dans le cinéma américain par trois cinéastes américains (D. W. Griffith, né en 1875 dans le Kentucky, Steven Spielberg, né en 1946 dans l’Ohio et Tate Taylor né en 1969 dans le Mississippi), qui traitent de trois périodes historiques différentes à des époques distinctes. Nous nous sommes alors posé la question du lien qu’il existe entre la réalité physique, vécue, d’un événement et sa représentation cinématographique qui est forcément distanciée, temporellement et/ou spatialement. Comment les réalisateurs peuvent-ils représenter fidèlement la réalité historique ? Comment évitent-ils (ou non) d’insérer des « filtres », qu’ils soient personnels ou sociologiques, et, comment ne pas transformer l’histoire, la modeler, en occultant par exemple les éléments qui n’abondent pas dans le sens du message que l’on souhaite véhiculer ? Dans l’hypothèse où le réalisateur est de parti-pris, comment le spectateur peut-il en avoir conscience au moment où il regarde le film ? Ce travail est donc né d’une réflexion sur l’importance culturelle et civilisationnelle de la notion de traumatisme culturel dans la représentation cinématographique de l’esclavage aux États-Unis. Les trois films que nous avons choisis pour notre corpus sont The Birth of a Nation de D.W. Griffith (1915), Amistad de Steven Spielberg (1997) et The Help, de Tate Taylor (2011). Ces films représentent trois époques distinctes de la vie et de la société américaine puisque The Birth of a Nation raconte le déroulement de la Guerre de Sécession en se plaçant dans la vie d’une famille sudiste. Amistad prend pour contexte les années 1839 à 1841 et The Help se déroule à Jackson, dans le Mississippi des années 60.En choisissant des films qui représentent des époques historiques distinctes mais qui ont également été réalisés à des périodes différentes les unes des autres, nous avons souhaité prendre en compte cette question de la réadaptation et de la réinterprétation de l’événement traumatique.Nous avons souhaité montrer, à travers notre travail, comment les cinéastes adaptent un fait réel ou un ouvrage littéraire, en supprimant certains éléments ou en rajoutant, en adaptant la réalité historique pour en faire une fiction qui cherche à montrer une représentation du réel. Nous avons aussi et surtout démontré comment la notion de « traumatisme culturel » influence le travail des cinéastes qui se sont penchés sur l'héritage culturel qu'est l'esclavage. Nous avons souhaité voir dans quelle mesure cette notion de traumatisme culturel influe sur la création artistique filmique, et dans quelle mesure ses caractéristiques pouvaient s’appliquer à notre corpus. Quels en sont les aspects les plus représentés et prégnants ? Nous avons fait l’analyse de notre corpus dans un ordre chronologique de création, en premier lieu nous nous sommes penchés sur The Birth of a Nation de D.W. Griffith, sorti en 1915, puis nous avons analysé Amistad de Spielberg, sorti en 1997, pour finir avec l’étude de The Help, réalisé par Tate Taylor et sorti en salle en 2011.Pour chacun de ces films, nous avons étudié le contexte historique et géopolitique inhérent à l’époque représentée, puis, le passage de la réalité historique à l’œuvre de fiction, le processus d’adaptation cinématographique, (éléments fidèles, ajouts, simplifications et suppressions) pour analyser la globalité de chacun en regard de cette notion de traumatisme culturel. / Slavery in the USA has always been an interesting thematic to us. We have always wanted to learn more about it thus understanding how such a system could have been implemented for more than 200 years, have caused the division and a fracture in a nation, have led to the Civil War and have left permanent scars ont the United States of America. This particular interest led us to look into the concept of cultural trauma, and into its representation by three American film directors (D. W. Griffith, born in Kentucky in 1915, Steven Spielberg, born in Ohio in 1946 and Tate Taylor born in Mississippi in 1969), who picture at various distinct periods three different historical eras. We have considered the link existing between the physical reality of an event and its cinematographic representation, which is spatially or temporally distanced from the event. How can film directors faithfully represent historical reality ? How do (or don’t) they avoid to insert in their work personal or sociological filters ? How don’t they transform history, or shape it by not mentionning the elements that do not concur to the message one wants to deliver ? What if the director’s views are biased? How can the viewer be conscious of it and keep it in mind as he or she watches the film?Our work initiated from a reflexion upon the cultural and socialogical importance of the notion of cultural trauma in the cinematographic representation of slavery in the United States. The three movies we have chosen to work on are : The Birth of a Nation, (D.W. Griffith, 1915), Amistad (Steven Spielberg, 1997) and The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011). These films represent three distinct periods in the life of the American society since The Birth of a Nation pictures the progress of the American Civil War inside a Confederate family, Amistad is set between the years 1839 and 1841, and The Help takes place in the sixties, in Jackson, Mississippi.In choosing films that represent various historical periods and that have been directed at different periods of time, we wanted to take into account both the notions of re-adapting and re-interpreting the traumatic event. We have wished to demonstrate, through our work, how film directors adapt a real fact or a book by deleting some elements or adding some others, by adapting historical reality to turn it into a fiction showing a representation of reality. We have also tried to show how « cultural trauma » acts upon the audiovisual work of film directors who choose to picture the cultural heritage of slavery. We have analyzed to what extent cultural trauma has an influence on filmic creation and how its characteristics can be applied to our corpus. What aspects of it are most represented ?We have decided to analyze our corpus in a chronological order. We have started with D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), we have then analyzed S. Spielberg’s Amistad, (1997), and ended with T. Taylor’s (2011). For each of these films, we have first studied the historic and geopolitic contexts of the historical periods represented, we’ve then dealt with the transition from historical reality to fiction and we’ve analyzed the entirety of each movie compared to to the notion of cultural trauma. How and to what extent can it be found into these artitic works ? As a mass media, cinema has an educational role and we have demonstrated its link with cultural trauma.