Topics in Contemporary Soviet and Post-Soviet Culture:Narratives of Loss:Trauma,Victims & Witnessing

Trauma is often seen as an event that blocks the victim's expressive capacities. It leaves people speechless, manifesting itself in various symptoms and post-traumatic disorders. Yet, it also generates a stream of narratives, textual, visual, or oral. This course explores this dual nature of trauma: trauma as a tool of repression and silencing, and trauma as a prerequisite for a talking cure. We see how traumatic events are worked through storytelling by creating narratives of loss, suffering, and displacement.