الفهرس 
Art for Hurt’s Sake: Poetry, Testimony and Trauma
Psychological TraumaOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The U.S.-led “war on terror” against Iraq is regarded as
another tangible evidence of the American imperialistic
ambitions in the Middle East. Launched on fabricated
allegations that the Iraqi regime possesses weapons of mass
destruction and supports terrorists, the U.S.-led war on Iraq has
undoubtedly proved to be a “war of terror” rather than a “war
on terror.” Bush’s whitewashing and hypnotizing rhetoric of
freeing Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, helping them exercise
democracy and intercepting terrorism has dramatically belied
the incalculable damage and destruction that afflicted Iraq and
Iraqis. The dramatic high rate of Iraqi causalities, the
destruction of the infrastructure, the exacerbation of ethnic and
sectarian clashes that led to the rise of ISIS, the torture scandals
at Abu-Ghraib, the heath, economic and political crises prove
ironically that the U.S. intervention in Iraq was no doubt for
achieving progress, peace and democracy and providing a
better future for Iraqis.
The U.S.-led war on Iraq has not only inflicted heavy
losses on Iraq and Iraqis but also on America and Americans.
America sustained losses estimated at about trillions of dollars.
Most importantly, the allegations and lies that were later
unveiled to be the pretexts the U.S. seized to occupy Iraq shook violently the credibility of America and unmasked its
imperialistic ambitions in the Middle East. As a result of this
illegitimate war, thousands of American soldiers and veterans
whether combatant or noncombatant were killed in Iraq or get
maimed.
The war on Iraq has not only wounded the bodies of its
victims but also and most importantly their psyches. A
considerable number of Iraqis has suffered the horrors and the
massive destruction of war that seared and traumatized their
psyches creating a collective trauma that left them trapped in
indelible memories. As the “war on terror” inflicted almost all
the Iraqi society with heavy losses and afflicted a large segment
of the population, trauma in this case turned to be social as well
as individual. Many American soldiers and veterans were
diagnosed with PTSD and could not be able to reintegrate in
their society after returning home. The psychological
traumatization that was highly recorded among many American
soldiers in Iraq led some of them to commit suicide and even
kill their comrades.
As considerable numbers of Iraqis and Americans,
whether soldiers or civilians, have suffered from war trauma, a
good number of these traumatized victims and survivors have
attempted to express their war trauma (the invisible wound) andto testify to the experience of war. Art, especially literature,
help traumatized victims and survivors to translate the
implosion that tears them from inside but can’t be perceived by
others into perceptible and tangible entity.
Turner, Antoon and Al-Jubouri, who have been through
the same experience of the war on Iraq, employ poetry to carry
the burden of the psychical hurt that can be no longer kept in
the “hurt locker,” to use Turner’s words. The poetic language
and techniques help them set the hurt free from its psychic
imprisonment. Poetry also enables these poets to document
their stories to protect them from cultural codification and
political hegemony that may work persistently for revising their
stories and then retelling them in a different way. Thus, their
testimonies are regarded as a subterranean resistance against
war as well as political and cultural hegemonies that could
pressure them to keep silent or retell a different story of the one
they really experienced.
This dissertation draws on trauma theory with reference
to its political, cultural and social dimension, applying its
psychoanalytic perspective of Freud, Cathy Caruth, Shoshana
Felman, Judith Herman and others to the poems of Turner,
Antoon and Al-Jubouri. Through analyzing a number of poems
written by the three poets about their traumatizing experience of war from a psychoanalytic perspective, the researcher shows
how they brought the miseries, destruction and terror of the war
on Iraq graphically and vividly to the reader through an victims
and survivors’ eyes, as survivor-authors, in an attempt to
unfold and speak aloud the untold truth of war, whose
credibility is only available through those who have gone
through such a horrible experience as themselves. Although the
three poets are from different backgrounds, individual’s history
and belong to two different cultures, the American and Iraqi
culture, and are in the positions of the conqueror and the
conquered they testify to the same traumatic war experience,
the “war on terror” each in his own way. In other words, each
poet testifies to the same experience of war from his own
perspective.
The dissertation is divided into an introduction, four
chapters and a conclusion. The introduction entitled “The ‘War
on Terror’: An Overview” briefly offers the background of the
war on Iraq, including the reasons which led to this war and the
reverberations inflicted on both Iraq and the United States. It
focuses on the psychic traumatization that inflicted a great
number of Iraqis and American soldiers as one of the disasters
of this war that can’t be compensated for.Chapter one entitled “Art for Hurt’s Sake: Poetry,
Testimony and Trauma” sets up the theoretical framework of
the dissertation. It briefly offers an introduction about trauma
theory and its development, especially in relation to literature.
The chapter explores, in addition, the significance of literature,
especially poetry in helping war victims and survivors
transform their trauma into words and testify to the experience
of war. The role of testimony as a means of healing as well as
resistance is also tackled in this chapter. The chapter also
broadens its scope to discuss whether the war trauma induced
by the U.S. invasion of Iraq has turned into “cultural trauma” in
Iraq or America or both.
Chapter two, “American Soldiers Testify: Brian Turner
Opens the ‘“Hurt Locker,’” explores a number of poems by
Turner in an attempt to introduce and evaluate the harsh
experience he went through as an American soldier in Iraq.
Analyzing such poems reveals Turner’s traumatic experience,
which resulted from going through near-death situations, terror,
and many unbearable atrocities in a war ironically launched to
achieve peace and eradicate “terrorism”.
Chapter three “A Contextualization of Iraqis’ Collective
War Trauma in Sinan Antoon’s Poems,” examines selected
poems by Sinan Antoon to reveal the agony and distress he experiences as an Iraqi-American, who lives exiled in America
witnessing broken-heartedly the destruction of his native
country as a result of the illegitimate U.S.-led war against Iraq.
Chapter Four “Traumatized Iraqi Women Testify: Amal
Al-Jubouri’s Poetry” provides the reader with an analysis of a
considerable number of poems by Al-Jubouri in an attempt to
explore the traumatic experience she has gone through as an
Iraqi woman, who has suffered years of war experience. It
shows how Al-Jubouri introduces a gender-specific version of
war.
The conclusion sums up the findings of the dissertation
and assesses how far have Turner, Antoon and Al-Jubouri been
able to write their experiences caused by the same traumatic
event, which is the “war on terror” on Iraq by employing
various themes and techniques.