ON HOW TO NARRATE THE UNSPEAKABLE; ON HOW TO TELL THE TRAUMA. AN APPROACH TO THE CONCENTRATION CAMP TESTIMONY OBLIVION BY EDDA FABBRI

Abstract

The traces of the extreme event suffered by the survivors and witnesses of the dictatorships of the Southern Cone are manifested during their stories in various aspects that reveal the close relationship language-trauma. The constant displacements in the enunciative position of the narrator, the temporary and chronological disorders, as well as the fragmentation, inconclusion and imprecision in narration, account for that relationship in which, in addition, the factual and the fictional are mixed and confused. The concentration camp testimony demands, therefore, to make use of poetics typical of other discourses when it is ready to overturn in a text the borderline experience by the author. In this sense, the still latent traces of the trauma, which refuses to be transmitted in common language, are presented in the work through a poetic, metaphorical and subjective discourse. From these premises, this article then suggests a reading of the post-dictatorial testimony Oblivion (2007), by the Uruguayan Edda Fabbri, based on the aesthetic marks that the language-trauma relationship manifests in it.