Fictionalising Trauma: The Aesthetics of Marguerite Duras's India Cycle

Fictionalising Trauma brings together the essential aspects of two troublesome issues: Marguerite Duras's cyclic aesthetics, and the challenge of working through major historical trauma. With Duras being the most disputed French artist after World War II, symbolising psychic trauma represents the undeniable problematic crux of contemporary trauma research. This stylistic analysis of the famous India Cycle offers an exploration of the novelistic and cinematic devices arising from Duras's steadfast struggle with the trauma of French colonialism.Learning on the concept of an embodied mind as developed in current social neuroscience, Fictionalising trauma reveals how converting trauma into fiction can be a powerful emotional strategyfor surviving traumatic events. The study also shows how Duras dissects European racism By progressively modifying and defamiliarising her key figures, thus suggesting a change in our cultural memory By collectively sharing trauma through art.