“I Smell the Ellero River Already”: Trauma and Exile in Roberto G. Fernández’s Holy Radishes!

Abstract

Trauma studies aims to construct an intellectual and ethical response to human suffering and their cultural and artistic representations. Trauma studies have inspired an array of disciplinary and interdisciplinary criticism that offer paradigms for understanding human behavior and coping strategies. Drawing on postcolonial trauma theory, this essay analyzes how Roberto G. Fernández in his novel Holy Radishes! complicates and challenges existing trauma paradigms suggesting that existing European psychoanalytic origins of the trauma theory are not adequate for depicting Cuban trauma experience. The text focuses on the specificity of trauma that constructs meaning through considering social, historical, and cultural contexts of traumatic experience. In other words, the paper aims to break with Eurocentrism by analyzing the text that bears witness to the suffering caused by exile. Thus the paper aims to discuss the usefulness of trauma theory for understanding colonial trauma caused by forced migration, exile, dispossession, diaspora, and political violence.

Keywords

• Trauma
• Postcolonial trauma
• eurocentrism
• temporality
• liminality

“I Smell the Ellero River Already”: Roberto G. Fernández’in Holy Radishes! Romanında Travma ve Sürgün

Öz

Travma çalışmaları insan acılarına ve bu acıların kültürel ve estetik ifade biçimlerine entelektüel ve etik bir tepki oluşturmayı amaçlamaktadır. Travma çalışmaları insan davranışını ve sorunlarla başa çıkma stratejilerini anlamaya yönelik paradigmalar sunan displinlerarası eleştiriye ilham olmuştur. Sömürge sonrası travma kuramından yola çıkarak, bu çalışma Roberto G. Fernández’in Holy Radishes! romanında var olan travma teorisine nasıl meydan okuduğunu ve Avrupa psiko-analitik merkezli travma teorisinin Küba travma tecrübesini aktarmada yetersiz olduğunu ileri sürmektedir. Metin, travma tecrübesinin sosyal, tarihi ve kültürel bağlamlarını göz önünde bulundurarak anlam oluşturan travmanın özgüllüğüne odaklanmaktadır. Bir başka deyişle, makale sürgünün yol açtığı acılara tanıklık eden metni sömürge sonrası travma kuramı bağlamında inceleyerek Avrupa merkezli yaklaşımdan uzaklaşmayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu sayede travma kuramının kolonyal travmayı anlamadaki etkinliğini zoraki göç, sürgün, diaspora ve politik şiddet bağlamında tartışmayı hedeflemektedir. 

Anahtar Kelimeler

• travma
• sömürüsonrası travma
• kollektif travma
• zamansallık
• eşiktelik

Kaynakça

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