Images of the Wounded Mouth: Dissonant Approaches to Trauma in Literary, Visual and Performance Cultures

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Images of 'wounded mouths' occur frequently in literary and visual artworks artefacts from both the Global South and the Global North and often imply some form of language loss in relation to trauma. There is, however, a decisive difference between language loss as a symptomatic reaction towards a single traumatic event as explained by Western trauma theorists, and language loss as part of an insidious trauma, caused and perpetuated by continuing forms of structural discrimination. This study contrasts literary and visual images from the Global South to the Global North so as to understand strategies of trauma confrontation within the ambit of what it terms Global South trauma theory. The study begins by examining works where language loss as insidious trauma is embedded in individual traumas that have led to the 'wounding of the mouth'. It then turns to works that deal explicitly with insidious trauma, and teases out the ways in which they may either unintentionally perpetrate the victimization caused by insidious trauma, or conversely, may create - via 'affective ties' - empowering affiliations and coalitions that foster resilience. Rather than aiming at a recovery and restoration of the individual, such forms of resilience, given expression in a range of visual and literary texts from the Global South, hold the community together despite ongoing traumas.