A Poetics of Trauma: The Work of Dahlia Ravikovitch [Paperback]

The work of the renowned Israeli poet, translator, peace activist, and 1998 Israel Prize laureate Dahlia Ravikovitch (19362005) portrays the emotional structure of a traumatized and victimized female character. Ilana Szobels book, the first full-length study of Ravikovitch in English, offers a theoretical discussion of the poetics of trauma and the politics of victimhood, as well as a rethinking of the notions of activity and passivity, strength and weakness. Analyzing the deep structure embodied in Ravikovitchs work, Szobel unearths the interconnectedness of Ravikovitchs private-poetic subjectivity and Israeli national identity, and shows how her unique poetics can help readers overcome cultural biases and sympathetically engage otherness.

ILANA SZOBEL is an assistant professor in Hebrew Literature at Brandeis University.

Acknowledgments Introduction: What Must Be Forgotten Part 1: Forever Beholden: The State of Orphanhood Poetics of Orphanhood She Has Damaged the Little Girl: Orphanhood and Motherhood His Eldest Daughter: Womens Symbolic Orphanhood Part 2: Estrangement: The Project of Female Subjectivity Estrangement and the Collision of Perspectives Imaginary Geography: The Gap between Here and Over There Part 3: She Tried to Escape and Lost Her Senses: Mania, Depression, and Madness The Manic-Depressive Mode: Poetics of Mobilit? Therefore I Invented Conversation: Speech about Madness, and Mad Speech Part 4: Unveiling Injustice: Testimony, Complicity, and National Identity Hovering at a Low Altitude: Witnessing and Complicity Guilt-Ridden Poems: The Contamination of Language and the Departure from Innocence Stinging and Itching/Maddeningly: The Palestinians as the Israeli Abjection Conclusion: The Transparent Skin That Unites Us Notes Bibliography Index