- Title
- Trauma, (Mis) Perception and Memory in Uwem Akpan's ‘Fattening for Gabon’:
- Creator
- Njovane, Thandokazi
- Date Issued
- 2012
- Date
- 2012
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142726
- Identifier
- vital:38111
- Identifier
- https://doi.org/10.1080/00138398.2012.731303
- Description
- It is a generally accepted principle in contemporary poststructuralist literary studies that language can only ever partially succeed in signifying that which it purports to signify. Where the profoundly dislocating experience of trauma is concerned, language loses even this partial success, and the victim of psychic violence is forced to resort to silence, a silence which is all the more expressive precisely because it overwhelms language. Thus, trauma fiction reveals what Steiner refers to as ‘the revaluation of silence’ which emphasises ‘the conceit of the word unspoken’ (67). Uwem Akpan's short story, ‘Fattening for Gabon’, from his collection Say You're One of Them (2008), is concerned with the culpability of socio-economic structures in giving rise to and perpetuating trauma in children. This paper will examine the retrospective narration of the protagonist by paying particular attention to the motif of memory. A discussion of the painful ambivalence of the experience and textualization of trauma, as conveyed through the story's use of silence and the disruption of the conventional bildung typical of narratives of remembrance, will form a substantial part of the paper.
- Format
- 11 pages
- Format
- Language
- English
- Relation
- English Studies in Africa
- Relation
- Njovane, T., 2012. Trauma, (Mis) Perception and Memory in Uwem Akpan's ‘Fattening for Gabon’. English Studies in Africa, 55(2), pp.102-112.
- Relation
- English Studies in Africa volume 55 number 2 102 112 October 2012 1943-8117
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor and Francis Online Terms and Conditions Statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/terms-and-conditions)
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Njovane, Thando (Dr)
RU Department of Literary Studies in English
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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