Trauma and the Mediated Self: Contemporary Life Writing Across Media

Trauma and the Mediated Self: Contemporary Life Writing Across Media examines twenty-first century representations of trauma in life writing across several media, including printed-word memoir, graphic memoir, autodocumentary, and autobiographical video games. Through careful analysis, Loredana Bercuci uncovers the medium-specific demands for the representation of trauma in life writing in the context of the contemporary memoir boom. She broadly argues that for a trauma representation to be considered successful, each medium adapts its own means to adhere to a certain definition of trauma and in this manner a particular piece of life writing is accepted as a successful and reliable representation of trauma. The representation of trauma in these autobiographical media has created a new trauma aesthetics that is defined by a cautious (re)engagement with the real.

Loredana Bercuci is assistant professor in the Department of Modern Languages at the West University of Timișoara.