 War Memory, Psychological Trauma, and Literary Witnessing: Afghan Cultural Production in FocusInayat Ullah SAGE Open, 2020, vol. 10, issue 3, 2158244020961128 Abstract: As non-literary accounts of post-traumatic stress disorder victims depict, and contribute to, history and memory, the present study uses the theoretical underpinnings of the psychological trauma theory to reflect on the flashbacks of Afghan trauma survivors, portrayed in the selected Afghan Anglophone fiction. The research project attempts to see how far the flashbacks of the traumatic memories of these characters contribute to the oft-quoted factual history. Borrowing from Caruth, Herman, Tal and LaCapra for the analysis, the study investigates the selected literary text to see how cultural productions from this war-torn country keep a record of the traumatic memories of the war that the Afghans were faced with during the Soviet invasion from 1979 to 1989. This trauma analysis of Atiq Rahimi’s Earth and Ashes (2002) shows that analyses of trauma-induced flashbacks in literary portrayals of traumatized characters may, simultaneously, contribute to the officially recorded history of the actual event of trauma. The study concludes that related literary texts may be studied in conjunction with factual historical documents to get a holistic picture of any traumatic event as well as the related memory. Keywords: war trauma; memory; PTSD; Afghan cultural productions; acting out and working through; coping with trauma mechanism; Earth and Ashes (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:10:y:2020:i:3:p:2158244020961128 Access Statistics for this article More articles in SAGE Open |
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