Overview

This dissertation investigates the interface between language and trauma from philosophical and literary perspectives. Using Wittgenstein's private language argument as a point of departure, I hypothesize that trauma which is never verbalized is damaging because it remains less than fully real, for language itself is of paramount importance in granting legitimacy to the experience. I then investigate whether and how this claim is borne out in the work of Ingeborg Bachmann (Malina), Thomas Bernhard (Wittgensteins Neffe) and Paul Celan (Meridian). Each text proves revealing about the relationship between trauma, language and silence in a way that supports my hypothesis. This dissertation combines contributions in several fields. Within Austrian studies, I demonstrate that Wittgenstein's private language argument is relevant to the problem of repressed and unspoken trauma in postwar Austrian literature, and that it can be a useful lens through which to reconsider the work of Bachmann, Celan and Bernhard. Within trauma studies, I propose that a key function of creating a trauma narrative is to make it more real for the survivor by bringing it into language. Within studies of Wittgenstein and literature, I expand on studies which examine influences and/or affinities between Wittgenstein and literature and carry my analysis back into a philosophical inquiry. Finally, within readings of Wittgenstein's private language argument, I make a novel claim about the argument's implications for trauma: If one remains silent about a traumatic experience, never verbalizing it even to oneself, a problem arises related to the impossibility of a private language; namely, one becomes privy to an experience no one else acknowledges, and this undermines the very reality of the experience.

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9781835205785

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