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This essay emphasizes the importance of incorporating trauma testimony in the classroom, but identifies specific cautions about doing so. “Trauma” refers to both an event and a condition. If, as Lawrence Langer argues, “all telling modifies what is being told,” then our desire to read and then valorize testimony proves problematic, since there cannot be an exact correspondence between the originary event as it occurred versus as it is told. This does not mean, however, that the event is “unspeakable” as some scholars have argued. There is a twofold value to narrating trauma: first, it allows the victim to better understand and thereby control his/her experience, and second, it has the potential to impact readers/listeners even when they do not fully understand the idiosyncratic “paracosms” used by the victim to capture the event. In assigning trauma testimony, we need to be mindful of our responsibility to the victim. That responsibility requires us to be trustworthy listeners willing to accept and empathize with the testimony. Providing a intellectual framework in the curriculum helps students maintain a degree of separateness they need.
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