Trauma Resolving: “Repetition Compulsion” as Reflected in Diana Ferrus’s "a Poem for Sarah Baartman"&Elizabeth Alexander's“The Venus Hottentot”

نوع المستند : العلوم الانسانیة الأدبیة واللغات

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Delta university for science and technology Faculty of arts English department

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Abstract

The paper is concerned with the role played by literature to fulfill Freud’s trauma resolution pattern and ecofeminist’s. The paper proposes the idea that Literature can play a crucial part in recollecting the trauma and presenting it with a therapeutic change through what Freud calls the “repetition compulsion” stage. The paper presents the example of a female subjugation trauma: the trauma of Sarah Baartman juxtaposed with that of Mother Nature deterioration. In an ecofeminist prespective, it highlights the interrelation between both traumas as well as between women rights and environmental sustainability. The paper argues for bridging the gulf between woman and Mother- Nature to restore power to both sides. However, resolving the two traumas is set as a prerequisite of female-nature reconnection. Accordingly, the paper’s suggested approach builds heavily upon two major theories that have a psychoanalytic as well as ecological standpoint: Freud’s theory of trauma and ecofeminist theory. It critically tackles Diana Ferrus's"A poem for Sarah Baartman" and Elizabeth Alexander's “The Venus Hottentot” seeking to trace the role the two concerned poems may have played to resolve the trauma of black race as well as that of Mother Nature. In so doing, the paper poses the question whether the two poems, apart from the two roles of representing a deferred action and the stage of “repetition compulsion”, participate in further stages of the trauma resolution so as to have the two traumas utterly resolved. It also traces signs of trauma resolving, restoration of power and subjectivity building.

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