Refereed article in compilation book (A3)

The Occupation: France 1939-44




List of AuthorsAvril Tynan

EditorsColin Davis, Hanna Meretoja

PlaceAbingdon

Publication year2020

Book title *Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma

Title of seriesRoutledge Companion Series

ISBN978-1-13-849492-3

DOIhttp://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781351025225

URLhttps://doi.org/10.4324/9781351025225


Abstract

Henry Rousso’s Vichy syndrome has been instrumental in
outlining the cultural trauma of the Occupation: from the Gaullist myth of
Resistance to the traumatic resurgence of the collaborationist agenda, to the
ongoing obsession with memory. This chapter outlines two approaches that will
help readers to navigate the emergence of trauma in francophone literature of
the Occupation. A chronological approach, broadly following Rousso’s model,
helps to identify the traumatic turn in cultural memory, and particularly
highlights the workings of traumatic postmemory in second generation authors like
Patrick Modiano. A multilayered approach, following the theoretical influences
of Michael Rothberg’s multidirectional memory, or Max Silverman’s palimpsestic
memory, suggests that all literature
bears some relationship to past traumas and advocates an interconnected
approach to reading that connects us globally across time and place. Finally,
this chapter suggests that the trauma of the Occupation, and particularly the
traumas of liberation, the épuration
and the tonte, is still latent in
contemporary society. Through the appendices of Marguerite Duras’ Hiroshima mon amour, the traumatic wound
becomes apparent through the silenced voices of women – the tondues – whose testimonies are still
missing today. 


Last updated on 2021-24-06 at 11:19