A poetics of trauma
Subtitle: the work of Dahlia Ravikovitch
By: Ilana Szobel
Series: HBI Series on Jewish women & Schusterman series in Israel studies
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Waltham, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 177
ISBN-13: 9781611683547; 9781611683554; 9781611683561
Subjects: Criticism and interpretation; Psychic trauma in literature; Alienation (Social psychology) in literature; Nationalism in literature; Identity (Psychology) in literature
Other titles: Work of Dahlia Ravikovitch
Description: "The work of the renowned Israeli poet, translator, peace activist, and 1998 Israel Prize laureate Dahlia Ravikovitch (1936-2005) portrays the emotional structure of a traumatized and victimized female character. Ilana Szobel's book, the first full-length study of Ravikovitch in English, offers a theoretical discussion of the poetics of trauma and the politics of victimhood, as well as a rethinking of the notions of activity and passivity, strength and weakness. Analyzing the deep structure embodied in Ravikovitch's work, Szobel unearths the interconnectedness of Ravikovitch's private-poetic subjectivity and Israeli national identity, and shows how her unique poetics can help readers overcome cultural biases and sympathetically engage otherness." -- Publisher's website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: what must be forgotten; title: Forever beholden: the state of orphanhood; title: Poetics of orphanhood; title: "She has damaged the little girl": orphanhood and motherhood; title: "His eldest daughter": women's symbolic orphanhood; title: Estrangement: the project of female subjectivity; title: Estrangement and the collision of perspectives; title: "Imaginary geography": the gap between "here" and "over there"; title: "She tried to escape and lost her senses": mania, depression, and madness; title: The manic-depressive mode: poetics of mobilité; title: "Therefore I invented conversation": speech about madness, and mad speech; title: Unveiling injustice: testimony, complicity, and national identity; title: "Hovering at a low altitude": witnessing and complicity; title: "Guilt-ridden poems": the contamination of language and the departure from innocence; title: "Stinging and itching"/"maddeningly": the Palestinians as the Israeli abjection; title: Conclusion: "the transparent skin that unites us".