Trauma Theory, the Lebanese Civil War, and Lebanese Fiction

This lead-in chapter provides overviews of relevant literature that guide the close reading of Rabee Jaber’s novels in the following chapters. It first draws on trauma theorytraumatrauma theory and its developments as a contested interdisciplinary field, emphasizing models and notions related to traumatic ruins, intergenerational trauma, and trauma testimony. It then turns to focus on the Lebanese war experience as depicted by novelists, literary critics, and contemporary artists, including a part on scholarly publications that look at trauma aspectstraumatrauma theory in Lebanese novels. The chapter proceeds to review the presence of the war’s undeadundead in Lebanese contemporary artLebanese art and Rabee Jaber’s philosophical interest in human suffering, his critical approach to historical representations, and his proficiency at employing literary techniques and exploiting the contested relation between fact and fictionfiction.