The Poetics of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Postmodern Literature

The Poetics of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Postmodern Literature provides an interdisciplinary exploration in early medical trauma treatment and the emergent postmodern canon of the 1960s and 1970s. By identifying key postmodern literary tropes (paranoia, uncanniness, biomediation) as products of an overarching post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) narrative paradigm, this concise study reveals unexplored aspects of the canonical novels at hand—such as the link between individual and collective traumatization—highlights the presence of epic elements in postmodern narratives, and identifies the influence of emerging psychiatric treatment on the post-WWII novels at hand. Performing a medical humanities reading of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5 (1969), and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961), this book introduces a novel way of examining trauma at the intersection of narrative, history, and medicine and recalibrates the importance of postmodern politics of transformation, while making the case for an aesthetics of trauma. By examining the historico-political developments that dictated the formation of PTSD in the wake of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, this book argues that the perception of PTSD symptoms directly influenced aesthetic and literary tropes of the Cold War era.

“This is an original and important contribution to our understanding of the cultural pathology of the Cold War. It incorporates medical and psychological elements in its fresh analysis of key novels from the period and throughout articulates its argument in clear and jargon-free language which will help to make it accessible to a wide readership.” (David Seed, Professor of English, University of Liverpool, UK) 

“Filippaki’s brilliant study of PTSD and Vietnam-era fiction is a sophisticated and febrile exploration of the filiations between stress disorder symptomatology and postmodern narrative, graced by superb close readings … Supported by a rich array of veteran testimony, and rich theoretical thinking … the book is an astounding resource for anyone seriously interested in postmodern fiction. This book gives us a double exposure of the Vietnam War as testimonial wound and as crucible for America’s collective anguish about, and transformative paranoid recognitions of, its perpetrator history.” (Adam Piette, Professor of Modern Literature, University of Sheffield, UK)

“This book brings to the study of war trauma a compelling and original aesthetic analysis. Through a cross-disciplinary sequence of ‘double exposures’ Filippaki parallels symptomatology with post-modern narrative tropes, highlighting the ‘subterranean yet solid’ connections of narrative form to PTSD in flashback, paranoia, and nightmare. What distinguishes this book is its astute fusion of the ‘poetics of the symptom’ with a thoughtful analysis of the cultural roots of PTSD in its Cold War setting.” (Peter Leese, Associate Professor, Department of English, Germanic and Romance Stuides, University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Iro Filippaki is an independent researcher working on trauma, affect studies, narratology, medicine, and war. She is the general editor of Tendon, a medical humanities creative journal, and is also on the editorial board of De Gryuter’s Video Games and Humanities series. She has taught English Literature, Comparative Literature, and Critical Writing at the University of Glasgow, and medical humanities courses at Johns Hopkins University where she was a postdoctoral fellow until July 2020. She currently resides in and writes from Athens, Greece.