2015 / 20 Prospero. Rivista di letterature e culture straniere

The current issue of “Prospero” offers a selection of works aimed at the exploration of the open wounds of the global body of modernity. The crucial aspect of the collection is the attempt to reflect, if possible, on the complexity of memory, of trauma, oblivion and forgiveness – or of the challenge experienced by those who do not want to, are not able to, or cannot (yet?) forgive. The issue is divided into three sections: “Coming to Terms with the Past(s)”, which proposes a perspective on traumas and past crimes, elaborated or still to be elaborated; “Voices from Beyond”, which concentrates on “memory ghosts”, on a phantasmagorical memory made of forgetfulness, voids and unheard voices; and “Restless Faultlines”, which gathers essays on the “extreme contemporary”.

This paper is occasioned by my personal experience of the Bardo National Museum in Tunis immediately after the 18th March 2015 attacks that claimed twenty-four lives, dealt a blow to the burgeoning political morale of post-revolutionary Tunisia, and etched an unprecedented mark in the memory of Tunisians of all persuasions. The bullet holes and fractured vitrines in and around the famed Salle de Carthage, where this country’s fabled antiquity meets its effort to bring about a cultural and political modernity, invite reflection on what Fredric Jameson has termed the ‘irrevocable’ function of historical trauma – and especially its modes of inheritability and transmission in a socius that is itself at a delicate crossroads of political transition. In such a fraught context, Lyotard’s ‘immemoriality’ must be read in light of what Jean Laplanche characterises as the ‘enigma’ that structures the retrospective quest: the ‘enigmatic’ retains itself as such since it always already embodies the noumenal essence of historical violence as a ceaseless question: “What does the dead person want? What does he want of me? What did he want to say to me?” (Laplanche). Reflecting on the fractured vitrine (and bullet-dented statue) of the infant Bacchus at the Bardo, and drawing on W. Benjamin’s and P. Ricoeur’s thought, this paper recalls the notion that time itself, as the fabric of retrospective or memorial passage, necessarily registers as the tension that obtains between an object and its accidents (G. Harman). This tension is what occasions the moment at which the ethical imperative of cultural rhetoricity – including the literary itself – becomes that of returning the representational principle to the materiality of history. Finally, I read Tunisian poet Moncef Ghachem’s poem "Cent Mille Oiseaux" (“A Hundred Thousand Birds”) in this light – as a poem whose “internal motor schema” (A. Lingis) is intended to subvert the poem’s own overt rhetoricity, hence making possible the installation of the communal memorial trauma as its ontological kernel.

This article argues the significance of literature in bearing witness to trauma. It engages the theories of trauma and autobiographies to read Palestinian women’s autobiographies. In a comparative vein, this work demonstrates the relevance of contemporary literature in attesting to human suffering and alleviating the pain by listening/reading and so healing. Edward Said’s writings on orientalism and Palestine have served to frame the overall discussion of the article. The trauma of exile, dispersion, and “national disintegration” are narrated as a shared experience by many Palestinian diaspora. I shall be considering "In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story" (2002) in conjunction with trauma as it implicates history and memory in the process of writing and representing experiences of war, loss, and exile. I contend that the trauma of not belonging after 1948 is the ultimate articulation of belonging to Palestine in Palestinian women’s life narratives.

The hauntings of the Indian Partition continue to be expressed via newer mediums as two or three generations negotiate its impact. This paper looks at role and function of the "1947 Partition Archive" that records oral testimonies of first-generation witnesses. It also examines an anthology of graphic narratives – "This Side, That Side" – that illustrates second-generation accounts of trying to understand the Partition, as it is passed down through stories and memories. Through an analysis of both, trans-generational negotiations with traumatic memories of the Indian Partition can be studied along with examining how newer channels open newer opportunities of representing its trauma. I argue that such mediums not only fulfil a therapeutic need but also highlight the trans-generational quality of forgiveness in light of collective traumas.