How to Speak of the Unspeakable: War Trauma and Identity of the Child in Novels by Vesna Aleksić

Bjelanović, Nedeljka (2025) How to Speak of the Unspeakable: War Trauma and Identity of the Child in Novels by Vesna Aleksić. In: Decades after: Serbian literature 1991-2021 : collection of essays. Belgrade : Faculty of filology ; Novi Sad : Academic book, pp. 126-143. ISBN 978-86-6153-771-4

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Abstract

At the heart of every conversation and thought about trauma lies an intrinsic wonder of the possibility of its linguistic incarnation, its true translation to the level of communication, introduction into the space of conversation about particular or shared experiences. The issue of communicating trauma stands as a double-edged sword or Gordian knot, equally in psychology, sociology, or literature and the study of it, if those things are even arbitrarily distinguishable. There is probably no need to even highlight that literature, in its own way, has always applied a particular verbalizing method—the shaping of traumatic, personal, as well as collective experiences in literature stands as one of the main bases on which the art of the word relies. The outlined hermeneutical problems gain a new dimension when it comes to children’s literature. In a specific cross-section with the matter of trauma in literature as a whole lies a special place of a very important field of study, for both the study of literature and beyond; for sociology, pedagogy, anthropology, cultural studies—the question of how children’s literature shapes and treats trauma. This paper will raise those questions while relating them to the novels of contemporary Serbian children’s literature author, Vesna Aleksić.

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