Introduction
-
Emily-Rose Baker
Abstract
This introductory chapter explains the aim of the volume: to read dreams not only as trauma’s coded language but also as an imaginative escape from and resistance to the oppression and systemic violence of ‘dark times’. Central to the book is a reassessment of the faculty and function of dreaming, one that sees dreams as active and perceptive psychological episodes whose capacity for thought renders them inherently political. This approach liberates the dream from its psychoanalytic detainment and opens it up to other kinds of theorisations, applications and interpretations. It illuminates precisely why the dream is uniquely placed to rail against, or indeed remedy, modern and contemporary trauma.
Abstract
This introductory chapter explains the aim of the volume: to read dreams not only as trauma’s coded language but also as an imaginative escape from and resistance to the oppression and systemic violence of ‘dark times’. Central to the book is a reassessment of the faculty and function of dreaming, one that sees dreams as active and perceptive psychological episodes whose capacity for thought renders them inherently political. This approach liberates the dream from its psychoanalytic detainment and opens it up to other kinds of theorisations, applications and interpretations. It illuminates precisely why the dream is uniquely placed to rail against, or indeed remedy, modern and contemporary trauma.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures vii
- List of contributors viii
- Foreword xiii
- Acknowledgements xviii
- Introduction 1
- I Dream images 17
- 1 Dream images, psychoanalysis and atrocity 19
- 2 Dreaming and collecting dreams in occupied France 39
- 3 Dreams and thresholds 60
- 4 Condemned to oblivion 79
- ii Dreams as sites of resistance 97
- 5 Traumatic dreams as sites of witness and resistance in the life and work of Ingeborg Bachmann 99
- 6 The Third Reich of Dreams 120
- 7 Living and resisting intersectional oppression through ballroom 139
- 8 Dreams, justice and spectrality in Rêver peutêtre (Perchance to Dream) by Jean-Claude Grumberg 160
- III Violent states 179
- 9 Dreams, repetition and the real in Marie NDiaye’s Ladivine 181
- 10 Dreaming the unthinkable 199
- 11 ‘My hell dream’ 220
- 12 Shit, blood and sperm 238
- Afterword 258
- Index 263
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures vii
- List of contributors viii
- Foreword xiii
- Acknowledgements xviii
- Introduction 1
- I Dream images 17
- 1 Dream images, psychoanalysis and atrocity 19
- 2 Dreaming and collecting dreams in occupied France 39
- 3 Dreams and thresholds 60
- 4 Condemned to oblivion 79
- ii Dreams as sites of resistance 97
- 5 Traumatic dreams as sites of witness and resistance in the life and work of Ingeborg Bachmann 99
- 6 The Third Reich of Dreams 120
- 7 Living and resisting intersectional oppression through ballroom 139
- 8 Dreams, justice and spectrality in Rêver peutêtre (Perchance to Dream) by Jean-Claude Grumberg 160
- III Violent states 179
- 9 Dreams, repetition and the real in Marie NDiaye’s Ladivine 181
- 10 Dreaming the unthinkable 199
- 11 ‘My hell dream’ 220
- 12 Shit, blood and sperm 238
- Afterword 258
- Index 263
