Trauma and Coloniality in Australian and Chilean women writers

Trauma and Coloniality in Australian and Chilean women writers

This project analyses the literary practices of women writers in Australia and Chile in order to further study the representation of trauma in postcolonial societies. Both countries share a comparable colonial past. The representation of trauma allows the comparison between two distinct geographic, linguistic and cultural areas which at the same time represent connections inherent in the Global South. The study of women’s writing in these contexts shines a light on silenced voices and marginalized narratives that contradict the postcolonial “Grand Narrative”. The reading of these women’s writing introduces the different types of violence experienced by characters whose voices remain unheard. The corpus also shines a light on intergenerational trauma that haunts the later generations who are unable to make sense of the obsessive thoughts and recurring overwhelming experiences they face. Thus, the research aims to expand our understanding of truth-telling in postcolonial societies. How can truth be told in a postcolonial context where truth is silenced and violence is normalized? The corpus reveals that this impossibility to tell leads the protagonists towards alternative ways to acknowledge their trauma. Without another’s assistance to understand and heal the past, fiction becomes a crucial mechanism to bring sense and coherence to fragmentary narratives. The project makes use of narrative analysis in conjunction with affective theories of trauma and (post)colonialism. The analysis of fiction gives a privileged insight into the characters’ minds and opens a window on non-conventional modes of beliefs. The research demonstrates how the protagonists engage with trauma through fiction. Storytelling and writing become essential processes of trauma narrative. It will be shown how the understanding of trauma requires the reconciliation of conventional and non-conventional modes of beliefs as well as the capacity of literature to inform our understanding of the functioning of trauma.

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