Whose Memory? Whose Justice?: Personal and political trauma in Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden

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Notes

¹ Cathy Caruth identifies the most salient and harrowing features of trauma, particularly its repetitive quality. Essentially, trauma is characterized by what Caruth terms ‘belatedness’ (1995: 8). Not knowable at the time of its occurrence or easily attachable to a simple past event, trauma restlessly replays itself, the unbidden reenactment of an event that eludes full articulation. The pathology of trauma, Caruth writes, is not defined by the event itself or by a distorted reaction to it but consists, rather, in the ‘structure of its experience or reception: the event is not assimilated or experienced fully at the time but only belatedly, in its repeated possession of the one who experiences it’ (4–5). Caruth writes that the ‘story of trauma’ is the narrative of a ‘belated experience’ that has an ‘endless impact on a life’ (7). For other discussions of trauma and trauma culture, see Kaplan (2005), Felman and Laub (1992), LaCapra (2001) and Caruth (1996).

² Dorfman continues: ‘I saw a crack in the barrier she had erected and ventured into the potential breech to tell her that though we disagreed on fundamentals, Icould still understand her distress. In return, Iasked that she try to put herself in my shoes, realize that Iwas not afflicted by a mala memoria, bad memories, but merely [by] memories that did not coincide with hers, that might, in fact, be antagonistic to hers, but that this was not a reason to kill or detest one another’ (2010).

³ LaCapra writes that ‘historical trauma is specific and not everyone is subject to it or entitled to the subject position associated with it’ (2001: 78). Conversely, everyone ‘is subject to structural trauma, but with respect to historical trauma and its representations, the distinctions between victim, perpetrators and bystanders is crucial. “Victim” is not a psychological category. It is in variable ways a social, political and ethical category’ (79).

⁴ Dorfman made this remark at the Edinburgh Festival in August 1993. He spoke of the debates that were held after performances in Chile and of how he has received thank you letters from victims of political violence (Colleran's notes).

⁵ Robert A. Morace's excellent discussion provides additional analysis and information about the world-wide productions of Death and the Maiden. Especially compelling is his account of the Chilean reception of the play and the relationship between the Chilean performance and the British production. He also offers rich insights on the pairings in London with other sketches, notably Griselda Gambaro's play, Putting Two and Two Together.

⁶ Elaine Scarry, in The Body in Pain, has observed that while ‘almost anyone looking at the physical act of torture would be immediately appalled and repulsed by the torturers’, as soon as ‘the focus of attention shifts to the verbal aspect of torture, those lines have begun to waver and change their shape in the direction of accommodating and crediting the torturers’ (1985: 35).

⁷ Mike Nichols made specific reference to these events in an interview cited by Larry Rohter. Since news of these trials was televized frequently, the attention of the American public was wrapped up in tales of celebrity stalking, violence toward women and sexual harassment. Clarence Thomas refuted the allegations of Anita Hill by turning the issue of sexual harassment into one of racial harassment; he was the victim now – of a ‘high-tech lynching’ (Rohter 1992: 32).

⁸ In his interview with Danny Postel, Dorfman describes leaving the United States and returning to Chile to participate in the democratic revolution of Salvador Allende, ‘who was elected president through the ballot and not the bullet, and who was overthrown with American money – with money, ironically for me, of my adopted country’ (Postel 1998: 3).

⁹ Colleran was present during this incident.

¹⁰ The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act actually had been repealed in 1986, but the social hostility towards interracial marriage was still deeply felt.