Bearing witness to the witness a psychoanalytic perspective on four modes of traumatic testimony / Dana Amir.

Author/creator Amir, Dana
Format Electronic
Publication InfoAbingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019.
Description1 online resource.
Supplemental ContentFull text available from Taylor & Francis eBooks
Subjects

Uniform titleLe-ha��id ��al ha-��edim. English
SeriesPsychoanalysis in a new key book series ; 47
Contents When language meets the traumatic lacuna : four modes of traumatic testimony -- Autobiographical fiction or fictional autobiography? Georges Perec's W, or the memory of childhood -- The post-traumatic dyad : Agota Kristof's The notebook -- The center mode as opposed to the marginal mode : Yehiel Dinur (Ka-Tzetnick)'s House of dolls -- Transcending the traumatic real : six variations in six stories by Ida Fink -- The traumatic lacuna as the negative possession of the other : Aharon Appelfeld's "Bertha" -- From the collapse of signifiers to the reconstruction of language : Robert Antelme's The human race -- The lacuna : reading children's testimonies -- Modes of memory, modes of healing -- Awakening the narrator : clinical work with modes of testimony -- Epilogue : Hiroshima mon amour and the command of boundary violation.
Abstract "Bearing Witness to the Witness examines the different methods of testimony given by trauma victims and the ways in which these can enrich or undermine the ability of the reader to witness them. Years of listening to both direct and indirect testimonies on trauma has lead Dana Amir to identify four modes of witnessing trauma: the "metaphoric mode", the "metonymic mode," the "excessive mode" and the "Muselmann mode." In doing so, the author demonstrates the importance of testimony in understanding the nature of trauma, and therefore how to respond to trauma more generally in a clinical psychoanalytic setting. To follow these four modes of interaction with the traumatic memory, the various chapters of the book present a close reading of three genres of traumatic witnessing: Literary accounts by Holocaust survivors, memoirs (located between autobiographic recollection and fiction), and 'raw' testimonies taken from Holocaust survivors. Since every traumatic testimonial narrative contains a combination of all four modes with various shifts between them, it is of crucial importance to identify the singular combination of modes that characterizes each traumatic narrative, focusing on the specific areas within which a shift occurs from one mode to another. Such a focus is extremely important, as illustrated and analysed throughout this book, to the rehabilitation of the psychic metabolic system which conditions the digestion of traumatic materials, allowing a metaphoric working through of traumatic zones that were so far only accessible to repetition and evacuation"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
Access restrictionAvailable only to authorized users.
Technical detailsMode of access: World Wide Web
Source of descriptionDescription based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher.
Issued in other formPrint version: Amir, Dana, author. Bearing witness to the witness Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019 9781138505292
Genre/formElectronic books.
LCCN 2018037264
ISBN9781315146508 (Master)
ISBN9781351379489 (Web PDF)
ISBN9781351379472 ( ePub)
ISBN9781351379465 (Mobipocket/Kindle)