Foreign Writing Agency: Abbas Khider and María Cecilia Barbetta Writing Towards Catharsis in German as a Foreign Language After Trauma
Open Access
- Author:
- Anderson, Katherine Elizabeth
- Graduate Program:
- German
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 15, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Thomas O. Beebee, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Thomas O. Beebee, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Daniel Purdy, Committee Member
Samuel Frederick, Committee Member
Susan Strauss, Outside Member
Elisabeth Herrmann, Special Member - Keywords:
- multilingualism in literature
Chamisso
migration literature
psychic trauma in literature
trauma narrative
foreign language writing
German literature - Abstract:
- Authors Abbas Khider and María Cecilia Barbetta both came to German as adults and have since written and published novels in German as non-native speakers of the language. While this decision to write in German as non-native authors of the language is in itself of interest, the reasons either author gave for their decision to write in German as opposed to their native languages inspired and shaped this dissertation. Both authors explained in various interviews that their debut novels could not have been written in their respective native languages of Arabic and Spanish. For Khider, writing in German allows him to build an emotional buffer between himself and the challenging events of his past; Barbetta described the language as a magic cloak, a Tarnkappe that allowed her to revisit the Buenos Aires of her memory, seemingly immune to its effects. The content of Khider’s and Barbetta’s first novels is strongly influenced by their respective experiences of dictatorship in Bagdad and Buenos Aires, experiences I have argued as traumatizing in this dissertation, in that they have a profound impact on the identity development of either author. After analyzing the intersections of Khider’s and Barbetta’s debut novels, I have concluded that traumatic experiences serve as both catalyzing as well as figurative influences in the writing process, both initiating and shaping the writing. The writing generated takes the form of a trauma narrative, a first-person account, marked by challenges to traditional boundaries between fantasy and reality and to time. Treating Khider’s and Barbetta’s novels as trauma narratives provides a context for understanding the capacity for writing to heal, or at the very least, address the symptoms of trauma. Whereas writing the narrative provides a framework for processing trauma, the process of writing in a foreign language, and writing in German as a foreign language in particular, provides perspective distance to the event, a venue for reinventing identity after trauma, and an avenue for healing play. My decision to compare and analyze Khider’s and Barbetta’s works in this dissertation was initially informed by student testimony in response to foreign language journal writing, by author interviews, and finally by the contextual factors that brought about this writing, including the controversial Chamisso Prize. In this dissertation, I bring together trauma research from the field of psychology and from literary theory to establish the contexts through which the catalyzing and formative influence of trauma on the text, the restorative capacity of the texts as trauma narratives, and finally the dynamic of foreign language acquisition in facilitating the writing and recovery processes became apparent. While the question why authors find writing in German as a foreign language preferable to writing in their native languages remains as the heart of this dissertation, pursuing the answer to this question raised further questions regarding genre and ethical responsibility.