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‘The unforgettable forgotten’: The Traces of Trauma in Herta Müller's Reisende auf einem Bein
Author(s) -
Haines Brigid
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0483.00229
Subject(s) - witness , context (archaeology) , innocence , german , subjectivity , postmodernism , unconscious mind , forgetting , representation (politics) , humanities , psychoanalysis , literature , philosophy , art history , history , art , psychology , epistemology , politics , linguistics , law , archaeology , political science
Trauma can be read as a metaphor of the (post)modern condition, particularly in a German context. This is because it is associated with aporias in memory and understanding which are nevertheless meaningful because they arise from and speak of specific historical circumstances. This article places Herta Müller's 1989 Berlin novel Reisende auf einem Bein within the context of twentieth‐century trauma literature. I read the protagonist, Irene, as a traumatised individual, whose experience (in Ceauşescu's Romania, then as an ethnic German immigrant in West Berlin) is locatable, but the causes of whose trauma elude representation because they are not synthesisable into frameworks of understanding. Irene comes to accommodate her trauma by inhabiting her surroundings and renouncing control – while reasserting agency. Thus the structure of trauma provides a way out of the perceived paralysis of postmodern constructions of subjectivity. Finally the novel bears witness to ‘the unforgettable forgotten’. ‘Das Überleben ist kein Leben mehr und dennoch das einzig mögliche Leben.’ (Alexander García Düttmann) ‘Whenever one represents, one inscribes in memory, and this might seem a good defense against forgetting. It is, I believe, just the opposite.’ (Jean‐François Lyotard) ‘Nicht Sprache ist Heimat, sondern das, was gesprochen wird.’ (Jorge Semprun)