Beyond Trauma Aesthetics

Abstract

I have argued that trauma theory needs to become more inclusive and culturally sensitive by acknowledging the sufferings of non-Western and minority groups more fully, for their own sake, and on their own terms. In this chapter, I will address the textual inscription of such experiences and suggest that certain received ideas and assumptions about how literature bears witness to trauma may need to be revised. The title of this chapter is adapted from a book by Rita Felski called Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (1989), which is more than 20 years old now but whose argument remains pertinent and can help us understand what is wrong with trauma aesthetics. Felski contends that it is impossible to construct a normative aesthetic for feminist literature.¹ This “chimera” has hindered attempts to adequately assess the merits and shortcomings of contemporary feminist writing, she argues, “by measuring it against an abstract conception of a ‘feminine’ writing practice, which in recent years has been most frequently derived from an antirealist aesthetics of textuality” (2). Felski specifically has in mind then-current approaches in French feminist literary theory which privileged avant-garde experimental writing that challenges conventional modes of representation, approaches which—as Toril Moi had noted in her highly influential book Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (1985)—appeared to have superseded “content-based” Anglo-American feminist literary theory, with its preference for accessible, realist writing reflecting women’s experience.