Document Type
Article
Abstract
Reminiscences is an installation of digital images, video, and soft sculpture that presents experiential trauma in a ‘multiple’ autobiography. The viewer is asked to consider how theory, particularly art history and art criticism, may be omitting the complicated messy details and multiple vantage points of trauma survivors. Primarily, the exhibit explores relationships between myself, a survivor of sexual abuse, rape, and paternal incest; a character I created, Emmy Brown, who is a response to my experiences; and the viewer. The installation intends to produce a situation for play that is both overt and antagonistic and that coaxes the viewer into the role of translator. My desire to locate the traumatic object surfaced from an analysis of the origins of Emmy Brown. Is she my child, my little sister, or a representation of one of my child states? Considering psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell’s ongoing positioning of the object, Reminiscences searches to include the tangled details of the family. Do theoretical interpretations of trauma rely too heavily on a Lacanian subject? Inspired by clinical literature on trauma, Reminiscences questions the politics of disclosure and considers those who have no access to recovery. Reminiscences invites the translator to verify or falsify testimony. As Emmy Brown discloses, the translator is asked to intervene, is invited to tell or keep secrets, and is permitted to walk away.
Repository Citation
Leger, Emily. "Reminiscences: Locating the Traumatic Object." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 10, no. 3, 2010, pp. 1–24. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol10/iss3/23