Struggle and the Negative: Trauma as Crisis of Language in the Contemporary Historical Novel

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A research seminar with guest speaker Dr Emanuela Piga (University of Bologna), as part of the both the Citizens and Capitalism, Crisis and Ideology research themes at the School of Modern Languages. Abstract This seminar focusses on accounts of historical violence and resistance in a selected corpus of contemporary novels of struggle from Italy, France and England. It will be argued that a narrative of struggle lies at the centre of the novels by Wu Ming, Helena Janeczek, and Andrea Levy, while the novels by Jonathan Littell, Martin Amis and Laurent Mauvignier focus on the representation of the negative, as the evil which is either acted/enacted, or suffered and endured. The seminar will thus concern meditations on offended lives. The polyphonic and multi-perspective narrative that characterizes the “novels of struggle and the negative” is construed at the intersection of literature and historiography, which are linked by common counter-hegemonic themes. The recovery of lost memories and submerged lives, the critical reading of the archive, and the narration of the political unconscious combine as shared narrative practices. The literary writing of traumatic emotions, on the other hand, expresses the need to solve the crisis of language and of representation caused by the experience of trauma. It will be shown how the loss, or the problematic change of the statute of citizenship, concerns most of these novels, which are set in the contexts of diaspora, colonialism, and the camp.

Biography

Emanuela Piga Bruni, University of Bologna (currently Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at the Royal Holloway, London). Recent publications include La lotta e il negativo. Sul romanzo storico contemporaneo, Mimesis, Milano 2018, and Romanzo e serie TV. Critica sintomatica dei finali di puntata, Pacini, Pisa 2018.

Simultaneous Translation

The event will be delivered in the medium of English. You are welcome to ask questions in the medium of Welsh during the Q&A session. If you intend to do this, please contact mlang-events@cardiff.ac.uk by Thursday 12 March to request simultaneous translation. Please note that 10% or more of those planning to attend will need to request this provision in order for it to be sourced and will be subject to resource availability. We apologise that the entire registration page is not available in the medium of Welsh.  Unfortunately, the platform we use does not offer this service.