Weaving a Traumatic Web: Trauma
in the fiction of Sherman Alexie
and Leslie Marmon Silko.
Literary Trauma Studies
 Is Trauma Fiction a paradox? (Whitehead 3)
 “Eurocentric Blind Spots of trauma theory” (Craps
and Buelens 10)
 Trauma studies focuses on the Holocaust.
 “the danger of revictimisation” (Van Styvendale 206)
Trauma
 Personal Trauma
 Cultural Trauma
 Historical Trauma (HT) + Historical Trauma Response
(HTR)
 Dori Laub- “the trauma of the holocaust is inherited
by the children of the holocaust survivors” (qtd. in
Van Styvendale 219)
 “present-day symptomatology” (Duran, Duran &
Braveheart 61)
Psyche and History
 Traumatic past carried forward to the present.
 “We’re carrying a pain that is 400 years old.” –Alanis
Obomsawin
 “PTSD happens around an event, an event with a
beginning and end. For Native people, the trauma
continues. There hasn’t been an end” (White Hat qtd.
in Wesley-Esquimaux and Smolewski 55).
Historical Trauma and Identity
 Protagonist simultaneously conveys personal and
collective trauma.
 Protagonist magnifies a historical event experienced
by a collective such as slavery, violence, war, etc.
Silko’s Ceremony (1977)
 Tayo functions as a cultural figure.
 Native American genocide  WWII
 “Tayo’s traumatic web is intermingled with the web
of life, the web of human history.” (Croisy 89)
 Personal + Historical Trauma  Identity
Alexie’s Indian Killer
 John Smith recreates the scene of his birth.
 Revisits trauma of adoption/kidnapping.
 Tenet: Trauma cannot be known/ represented
directly.
 “trauma can only be known or represented indirectly
through narrativization.” (Van Styvendale 217)
Alexie’s Indian Killer
 Alexie says in Tomson Highway interview that John
Smith goes mad throughout the course of the book.
 Schizophrenia  Metaphor
 Rage related to trauma
 “The United States is a colony and I’m always going
to write like one who is colonized, and that’s with a
lot of anger” (“Seeing Red” par. 15).
Trauma Studies
 Colonial Trauma is “a collective experience” (Craps
and Buelens 4)
 LaCapra, Erikson and Hutcheon Unproblematic
 Llyod, Saunders and Aghaie  Reductive and
politically irresponsible
Conclusion
 Trauma Theory  Colonial Trauma
 Narrative techniques and innovations:
 Landscape imagery  pathetic fallacy
 Nonlinear plot
 Disruption in temporal sequence Difficulty in
representation and associated confusion.
Works Cited/Consulted
 Alexie, Sherman. Indian Killer. New York: Grove P, 1996.
Print.
 ---. “Seeing Red.” Interview with Gretchen Giles. Sonoma
Independent 3-9 Oct. 1996. Web. 17 Feb. 2011.
 Alexander, Jeffrey C et al. Cultural Trauma and Collective
Identity. Berkley: U of California P, 2004. Print.
 Brown, Laura S. “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist
Perspective on Psychic Trauma.” Trauma: Explorations in
Memory. Ed. Cathy Caruth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,
1995. 100-12. Print.
 Bhabha, Homi. "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the
Margins of the Nation State." The Location of Culture.
London: Routledge, 1994. Print.
 Caruth, Cathy. Interview with Aimee L. Pozorski.
Connecticut Review 28.1 (2006): 77-84. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
Works Cited/Consulted
 ---. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and
History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. Print.
 ---. “Trauma and Experience: Introduction.” Trauma:
Explorations in Memory. Ed. Cathy Caruth. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 3-12. Print.
 Christie, Stuart. “Renaissance Man: The Tribal
“Schizophrenic” in Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer.”
American Indian Culture and Research Journal 25.4
(2001): 1-19. Wilson Web. Web. 10 March 2011.
 Craps, Stef, and Gert Buelens. “Introduction:
Postcolonial Trauma Novels.” Studies in the Novel
40.1&2 (2008): 1-12. Project Muse. Web 05 March 2011.
Works Cited/Consulted
 Croisy, Sophie. “Reimagining Healing after Trauma: Leslie
Marmon Silko and Judith Butler Writing the War of
Culutres.” Nebula 3.2-3 (2006): 86-113. Web 15 Feb. 2011.
 Duran, Bonnie, Eduardo Duran and Marie Yellow Horse
Brave Heart. “Native Americans and the Trauma of
History.” Studying Native America: Problems and Prospects.
Ed. Russell Thornton. Wisconsin: U of Wisconsin P, 1998.
Print.
 Farrell, Kirby. Post-Traumatic Culture: Inquiry and
Interpretation in the Nineties. Maryland: Johns Hopkins UP,
1998.
 Gilmore, Darren. “Contemporary Trends in Trauma and
Literary Theory.” Academia 2.0. 12 Sept. 2010. Web. 15
March 2011.
Works Cited/Consulted
 Laub, Dori. “Bearing Witness, or the Vicissitudes of
Listening.” Testimony: Crisis of Winessing in Literature. Ed.
Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub. New York: Routledge,
1992. 57-74.
 Smelser, Neil J. “Psychological Trauma and Cultural
Trauma.” Alexander 31-60. Print.
 Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York: Penguin
Books, 1977.
 Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience.
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1977.
 Van Styvendale, Nancy. “The Trans/Historicity of Trauma in
Jeannette Armstrong’s Slash and Sherman Alexie’s Indian
Killer.” Studies in the Novel 40.1/2 (2008): 203-223. EBSCO.
Web 02 March 2011.
Works Cited/Consulted
 Wesley-Esquimaux, Cynthia, and Magdalena
Smolewski. Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing.
Ottawa, ON: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2004.
Print.
 Whitehead, Anne. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh UP, 2004. Print.