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ABSTRACT
Based on a critical analysis of Sonali Deraniyagala’s memoir Wave through the lens of sublimity and trauma theory, this paper argues that the discursive interplay of trauma and sublime in the text functions as a powerful means to express the unspeakable. Situating the text within the revised aes- thetics of the sublime, where the possibility of death constantly haunts the current existence or survival, the paper draws upon Burkean notions of the sublime and Cathy Caruth‘s and Judith Herman’s approaches to trauma to demon- strate how the use of symbolic characters and the fear of death contribute to the processing of trauma and the expression of the unspeakable. By exploring the text’s themes of grandiosity and nobility, as well as the possibility of death as a haunting factor, this analysis shows how the sublime in Wave serves as a means of expressing the ineffable and representing the unrepresentable through language.
KEYWORDS:
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 1.
2. Deraniyagala, Wave, 85.
3. Deraniyagala, Wave, 16.
4. Kaur, “Psychological Reverberations of a Disaster,” 147.
5. Garber, “Point of View and the Egotistical Sublime,” 409–18.
6. Seagall, “Pursuing Ghosts,” 42.
7. Deraniyagala, Wave, 106.
8. Travis, “Sonali Deraniyagala wins the 2014 PEN/Ackerley Prize 2014,” 2.
9. Carroll, “The Limits of the Sublime,” 171.
10. Doran, The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant, 176.
11. Schiller, “Of the Sublime: Towards the Further Realization of Some Kantian Ideas,” 90–99.
12. Saxena, “Hegel on the Sublime,” 153–72.
13. Hartmann, “Notes on the Theory of Sublimation,” 9–27.
14. Hartmann, “Notes on the Theory of Sublimation,” 9–29.
15. Deraniyagala, Wave, 11.
16. Deraniyagala, Wave, 141.
17. Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 4.
18. Deraniyagala, Wave, 65.
19. Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 250.
20. Roy, “The Persistence of the Trauma Memoir,” 1.
21. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 2013, 275.
22. Deraniyagala, Wave, 67.
23. Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 263.
24. Deraniyagala, Wave, 41.
25. Deraniyagala, Wave, 84.
26. Deraniyagala, Wave, 89.
27. Deraniyagala, Wave, 11.
28. Deraniyagala, Wave, 88.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Argha Bhattacharyya
Argha Bhattacharyya is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal, India. His research areas include Postcolonial Studies, Feminist Theory and Deleuzian thinking. His articles have been published in journals like Quarterly Review of Film and Video by Routledge and Postcolonial Studies by Routledge.