READING TRAUMA IN NADINE GORDIMERS MY SONS STORY

This paper attempts to analyse Nadine Gordimer’s novel My Son’s Story in the light of trauma theory. Since the publication of Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed Experience, there has been a proliferation of trauma studies. Many critics find that trauma studies have been Eurocentric and therefore they advocate for decolonization of trauma studies. These critics argue that literary trauma studies must go beyond an identifiable event in the past of an individual. Critics like Mengel and Borzaga found Caruth’s formulation inadequate to analyse the trauma in South Africa because trauma in this case is involved with the history of apartheid. Apartheid has caused the collective traumatization of several generations and therefore it cannot be said to be an unclaimed. On the other hand, Boris Cyrulnik, a French psychiatrist, argues that trauma is a kind of interplay between the past and the present and this interplay may open up the possibility of generating resilience or the capacity of a person to recover from trauma. Supporting Cyrulnik’s arguments, Isabel Fraile Murlanch says that one of the factors behind the development of resilience is the way in which present and past combine in the narratives. In other words, narrative can play a role in developing resilience. The traumatic experience can leave an indelible mark on the life of the victim but that may not lead him to neurosis. Nadine Gordimer’s novel, My Son’s Story may be discussed in the light of this argument that narratives may have a therapeutic value.