From: Pat Enciso <ENCISO>
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 95 13:19 CDT

I've been thinking, too, about Perry's challenges throughout Fallen
  Angels, and am reminded of a theory of witnessing and crisis from Shoshona Felman and Dori Laub's book, Testimony: Crisis of witnessing in history, literature and psychoanalysis. Their thesis is that when we encounter profound trauma, such as Perry has witnessed, it is a mark of that trauma that it becomes unspeakable. No experience, no language has prepared us to articulate clearly, let alone fully, the account of our experiences. I think Nina is right, that PErry is unprepared for the world that awaits him. He is no more able to provide a frame of reference for the trauma of the Vietnam War than most of the veterans of that experience. Only in the past five years have we seen a way through the 'emptiness' of that memory in the form of novels and 'return to the setting' accounts. Even then, Felman and Laub argue, what we think we have seen is unreachable,unknowable. We are continually grasping for or resisting insight into these experiences. I do think PErry will grasp for understanding. But his reach will be bound by a profound loss of language to describe his world at that time. Felman and Laub make the case that the critical point of intervention in silence is the presence of someone who will listen... who will be a witness along with the one who offers testimony of their trauma. In many books for children, such a person comes forward. The CCBC-NEt's most recent discussion of Walk Two Moons is a case in point. Salamanca's trauma found a witness in her grandparents, and through the metaphoric telling of her story through Phoebe's experience (as an aside, I expected Phoebe to turn out to be an imaginary friend!). I'm not sure who Perry's
'listener' will be, but a feel that one will be there for him. Maybe we, as readers, are the listeners. Pat Enciso enciso at macc.wisc.edu
Received on Sat 16 Sep 1995 01:19:00 PM CDT