Narrating survival in Primo Levi's If this is a man, and The drowned and the saved
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Date
2008-08-19T10:05:23Z
Authors
Collopen, Leigh-Ann Mary
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Abstract
Abstract
This research report explores the process of narrating survival in Primo Levi’s If
This Is A Man and The Drowned and The Saved. The central objective is to
understand the process of psychological survival is narrated in Levi’s
autobiographical narrative. To this end, I have used a psychoanalytical
framework to understand the traumatic impact of Auschwitz on subjectivity as
well as to position subjectivity in relation to autobiographical narrative. I shall
argue that the trauma of Auschwitz resulted in an eroded and shattered
subjectivity and that narrative offers a space in which the reconstruction of that
subjectivity can be negotiated.
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Keywords
narrating survival, Primo Levi, Lacanian theory, subjectivity, historical trauma, autobiographical narrative