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Haunted by History: Revisiting Childhood Trauma in Philippe Grimbert’s Un secret
- The French Review
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 89, Number 4, May 2016
- pp. 122-135
- 10.1353/tfr.2016.0118
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
This article examines the adult narrator’s quest to revisit transgenerational childhood trauma in Philippe Grimbert’s Un secret (2004). I analyze the difficult process of finding language with which to express embodied trauma that repeats through bodily symptoms and behaviors to a narrative structure that leads to mourning and commemoration. Using theory about testimonial objects, postmemory, and traumatic realism, I argue that the intersecting themes of body, language, and conflicting realities, as well as their relationship to testimonial objects facilitate the narrator’s textual journey from haunting to healing.