Date of Award
11-19-2008
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. Chris Kocela - Chair
Second Advisor
Dr. Marilynn Richtarik
Third Advisor
Dr. Nancy Chase
Abstract
Two of Don DeLillo’s recently published novels, The Body Artist (2001) and Falling Man (2007), feature performance artists performing trauma. Through the bodies of these performers, DeLillo restates the central concern of trauma studies: if trauma is that which denies mediation, how may we speak about traumatic experience? DeLillo’s stagings of traumatic (re)iterations illustrate how the missed originary moment of trauma precludes directly referential content in traumatic representation. But I propose that performed trauma – the knowledge of forgetting addressed to another – recapitulates the structure of traumatic experience itself, thereby revealing trauma to be wholly constituted in repetition, and providing a means of speaking about the unspeakable. I hope to illustrate how restoring trauma to language revives the ethical and political efficacy of traumatic representation.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/1059504
Recommended Citation
Griffin, Brett Thomas, "Can the Wound Be Taken at Its Word?: Performed Trauma in Don DeLillo's The Body Artist and Falling Man." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2008.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/1059504