Forced Migration, Psychological Trauma and Affective Solidarity in A Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abawi

Abstract

Refugee sufferings ensued by war experiences hang over the disciplines of pain, trauma, and refugee studies. Refugee crises caused by war, civil massacres, terrorist activities, and genocides have become a drastic issue since 1945, hence assuming more catastrophic state in contemporary times. Like other refugee nations, Syria has also been under the clouds of oppression, atrocity and insurgency since March 2011 when civil war erupted all around Syria. The victims were forced to flee their homeland to save their lives. Fleeing from insurgencies prevailing in Syria brought about refugee trauma to the Syrians, that can be divided into three phases—‘pre-displacement’, ‘displacement’ and ‘post-displacement’. The issue grabbed the attention of academicians and political intelligentsia who documented the war crimes and refugee crises, and their effects on both victims and witnesses. As a common trend, the existing scholarship focused majorly on the bleak sides of the refugee crises and refugee trauma, whereas disregarded the elements of resilience, intra-communal and inter-community solidarity. So, contributing to the existing scholarship, the present research focuses on analyzing the Syrian novel A land of permanent goodbyes, through eclectic theoretical framework based on the theories of trauma theorists Cathy Caruth (1996) and Dori Laub (1992), and solidarity theorists Carol C. Gould (2007) and Paul de Beer & Ferry Koster (2009). By analysing the representative excerpts of the novel, the study aims to explore the interconnections among forced displacement and ‘trauma studies’. It also investigates how the social injustice stimulates the past trauma events. Moreover, the study also demonstrates how refugee trauma invokes the solidarity acts. This representative study will surely be a sort of fresh critical bent for other alike research works.