In this thesis, a semi-autobiographical manga, Hadashi no Gen, written by Nakazawa Keiji, is analyzed through the lens of trauma theory. By using trauma theory, I hope to shed light on in what way trauma might affect narrative techniques and in what way the narrative techniques convey trauma and emotion to the reader. For the analysis “Trauma Fiction” by Anne Whitehead was chosen and categories based on her findings were made. The categories are: Intertextuality, repetition, dispersed and fragmented narrative voice, memory place, choiceless choice and fantastic. I discovered that all these themes, observed in other trauma fiction as well, are more or less used as a narrative tool in Hadashi no Gen. Further I observed that by conveying traumatic events and emotions through a combination of images and language is a powerful tool and might even be more effective than standard prose text

The subject of this dissertation is the representation of temporality, trauma and sexuality in Antanas Škėma’s fiction. The chapter “Temporal structures” examines temporal order in the writer’s novella “Isaac” according to Genettes narratology. The analysis reveals deliberately inserted mechanisms in the construction of the text, which disrupt the narrative investigation. A survey of temporal structures exposes invented events in the text and the definitions of “factual reality” and “imaginary reality” are introduced. The narrative analysis results in a hypothesis that Škėma’s text has been constructed as an imitation of human memory and as a representation of the factual reality outside the text. The chapters “Representation of trauma” and “Representation of sexual perversion” use Freud’s trauma theory and sexual theory as a method. Trauma appears to constitute the construction of the narrator and his urge to distort temporal links between the narrative and the story. When the narrator in Škėma’s “Isaac” focuses on the depiction of sexually perverted consciousness, the text affects the reader by forcing him to break off his horizons of expectation. The depiction of rape in Škėma’s fiction links the themes of sexuality and power and of sexuality and trauma. The writer detaches the representation of sexuality from the definition of love: sexuality, portrayed in the analyzed texts, appears to create its own norms. This is one of many ways to transform the depiction of sexual perversion into a social norm in Škėma’s narrative. The chapter “Škėma’s Autobiography and literary critics” provides a re-reading of the writer’s autobiography and his journalistic texts. The chapter ”Publication and reception of Škėma’s fiction” provides a compiled reading of earlier research and a survey of the writer’s books published in exile.

This thesis explores the psycho-socio-cultural dynamics that surrounded black womanhood in antebellumGeorgia. The goal is twofold: first, to examine how slave narratives, testimonies, and interviews depicted the plight of enslaved black women through a womanist lens and second, to discover what political and socio-cultural constructions enabled the severe slave institution that was endemic toGeorgia. Womanist theory, psychoanalytic theory, and trauma theory are addressed in this study to focus on antebellum or pre-Civil WarGeorgia.

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In literary trauma theory, victimized victimizers represent an ambiguous area. In my thesis, I show how Perry Smith, a historical figure in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and Josef Kavalier, a fictional character in Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, represent these ambiguities. Both men become murderers acting out violence that was inflicted upon them as children. However, only Kavalier seems to work through the trauma.

Sexual violence (SV) is a pressing concern in the United States. SV (i.e., unwanted sexual contact, coercion, and wanted or unwanted penetration of another). Individuals with minoritized sexual, racial/ethnic, and gender identities experience worse psychosocial outcomes than their majority counterparts. People with multiple marginalized identities have been shown to experience traumatic events at greater rates and with significantly different outcomes compared to those with one minoritized identity. Cultural betrayal trauma theory proposes that these differences in mental health outcomes may be explained in part by a shared cultural identity between a SV perpetrator and victim, which is posited to exacerbate mental health symptomology. This study's sample consisted of 276 participants who were over the age of 18 and identified with both minoritized sexual and racial/ethnic identities. Results of this study failed to support most of the study's hypotheses yet confirmed that increase in mental health symptomology is associated with SV experience. This study indicates that research of cultural betrayal trauma may necessitate a more nuanced approach among individuals with multiple marginalized identities.

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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>Abstract</p><p>During the last decade many female writers of British decent have focused on identity construction and coming of age. These writers have been especially interested in exploring how people living in the diaspora are trying to cope with their ambivalent feelings towards their mixed cultural heritage. Helen Oyeyemi's <em>The Icarus Girl</em> is one of these novels. The novel depicts a young girl's struggle with the dualism within her, being both British and Nigerian, that threatens to dissolve her self-identity. This essay will explore how <em>The Icarus Girl</em> deals with the theme “double consciousness” (imposed binaries) and how the narrative's structure and stylistic devices enable the story to be read (interpreted) from two different perspectives, thus the narrative's structure offers an ambiguous double reading that corresponds to Jessamy's unresolved doubleness. The first reading suggests that the traumatic experience of “double consciousness“ is left in a status quo, or even being fatal, which in the essay is called the Western reading. The second reading suggests a recovery, i.e. that the young protagonist comes to terms with her mixed cultural heritage, the so-called West-African reading. In pursuing this aim I discuss how “double consciousness” in this novel is a traumatic state of mind transferred from mother to daughter, but also how stylistic devices, belonging to the genre of the fantastic, are used to emphasize the theme and make possible the two different readings.</p>