Trauma, Narrative and Literary or Legal Justice

Golnar Nabizadeh (Lead / Corresponding author)

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter (peer-reviewed)peer-review

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    Abstract

    This chapter examines the intersections between the law, trauma, and testimony, arguing that the law has increasingly come to recognise the breadth of experience, and range of narrative iterations, that may constitute trauma. The discussion commences with a consideration of Shoshanna Felman’s re-reading of a witness’s ‘failed’ testimony in Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), arguing that Felman identifies important characteristics housed within the witness’s apparently unsuccessful narrative, and that paradoxically communicate the trauma therein. The chapter then turns to the long-standing relationship between the law and images, before focusing on the representation of the law in selected comics from the twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Here, the discussion focuses on the comics “Villawood: Notes from an Immigration Detention Centre” (2015) by Safdar Ahmed, and Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama’s Four Immigrants Manga (1931). These examples are designed to highlight the way that comics represent the law through critique, and visualization, among other features.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationLaw and Literature
    EditorsKieran Dolin
    Place of PublicationCambridge
    PublisherCambridge University Press
    Chapter17
    Pages273-290
    Number of pages18
    ISBN (Electronic)9781108386005
    ISBN (Print)9781108422819
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 25 Jan 2018

    Publication series

    NameCambridge Critical Concepts

    Keywords

    • Trauma
    • Comics
    • Witness
    • Literary theory
    • Social justice
    • Visual culture
    • Evidence (Law)

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Arts and Humanities(all)

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