The Art and Science of Trauma and the Autobiographical

Abstract

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“…Interacting with the object may help the individual to address such questions that are elementary in re-establishing and re-narrating an individual's life story after a difficult and traumatic experience (cf. Jensen 2019). Examples of re-narrating the life-story through interaction with an object were especially well shown in the examples of a camera and a crocheted pincushion.…”

“…Building on these theoretical underpinnings, this article aims at examining the possibility of a materialized narrative functioning as a trauma narrative. A significant part of trauma research in literature studies and the humanities (for example, in folklore studies) has focused on autobiographical narratives (Jensen 2019). An essential element of processing trauma is the person's ability to re-form and re-narrate their life narrative after the traumatic experience.…”

“…An essential element of processing trauma is the person's ability to re-form and re-narrate their life narrative after the traumatic experience. The autobiographical narrative provides questions that can be used as a means of processing the trauma, and so rebuilds one's life narrative (Jensen 2019). For this reason, the life narrative has remained one of the central objects of research in trauma research.…”

“…As Hanna Meretoja has argued, the fundamental distrust of post-structurally oriented inquiries into trauma stems from a more general view of poststructuralism toward explanation and understanding as violent appropriation by its very essence (Meretoja 2020: 29). As the range of approaches to trauma that informs cultural inquiry is widening, importantly also including cognitive and neuroscientific research (see, e.g., Jensen 2019;Pederson 2020: 220-229), the dissociative model proposed by Caruth is no longer viewed as the only possible response to trauma. Although hugely influential, the exclusivity of such a paradigm has been challenged by innumerable renderings of traumatic experience in all kinds of narrative formats as well as the work of many trauma scholars who engage with different theoretical and critical paradigms, demonstrating the importance of narrative mediation of traumatic experience for a number of purposes, from coping and healing to bringing about changes in cultural perceptions and social and legal regulations (see, e.g., Balaev 2014;Jensen 2019;Douglas 2010).…”

“…As the range of approaches to trauma that informs cultural inquiry is widening, importantly also including cognitive and neuroscientific research (see, e.g., Jensen 2019;Pederson 2020: 220-229), the dissociative model proposed by Caruth is no longer viewed as the only possible response to trauma. Although hugely influential, the exclusivity of such a paradigm has been challenged by innumerable renderings of traumatic experience in all kinds of narrative formats as well as the work of many trauma scholars who engage with different theoretical and critical paradigms, demonstrating the importance of narrative mediation of traumatic experience for a number of purposes, from coping and healing to bringing about changes in cultural perceptions and social and legal regulations (see, e.g., Balaev 2014;Jensen 2019;Douglas 2010). Approaching the possibilities of narrative representation of traumatic experience from a somewhat different angle, several trauma scholars have also demonstrated the impact of cultural "scripts" influenced by broader cultural understandings and social and cultural regulations and preferences that shape the possibilities of the representation of traumatic experience and can have both an empowering and limiting or even cancelling effect (Douglas 2010;Gilmore 2017: 85-117).…”