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Abstract The U.S.-led “war on terror” against Iraq is regarded as another tangible evidence of the American imperialistic ambitions in the Middle East. Launched on fabricated allegations that the Iraqi regime possesses weapons of mass destruction and supports terrorists, the U.S.-led war on Iraq has undoubtedly proved to be a “war of terror” rather than a “war on terror.” Bush’s whitewashing and hypnotizing rhetoric of freeing Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, helping them exercise democracy and intercepting terrorism has dramatically belied the incalculable damage and destruction that afflicted Iraq and Iraqis. The dramatic high rate of Iraqi causalities, the destruction of the infrastructure, the exacerbation of ethnic and sectarian clashes that led to the rise of ISIS, the torture scandals at Abu-Ghraib, the heath, economic and political crises prove ironically that the U.S. intervention in Iraq was no doubt for achieving progress, peace and democracy and providing a better future for Iraqis. The U.S.-led war on Iraq has not only inflicted heavy losses on Iraq and Iraqis but also on America and Americans. America sustained losses estimated at about trillions of dollars. Most importantly, the allegations and lies that were later unveiled to be the pretexts the U.S. seized to occupy Iraq shook violently the credibility of America and unmasked its imperialistic ambitions in the Middle East. As a result of this illegitimate war, thousands of American soldiers and veterans whether combatant or noncombatant were killed in Iraq or get maimed. The war on Iraq has not only wounded the bodies of its victims but also and most importantly their psyches. A considerable number of Iraqis has suffered the horrors and the massive destruction of war that seared and traumatized their psyches creating a collective trauma that left them trapped in indelible memories. As the “war on terror” inflicted almost all the Iraqi society with heavy losses and afflicted a large segment of the population, trauma in this case turned to be social as well as individual. Many American soldiers and veterans were diagnosed with PTSD and could not be able to reintegrate in their society after returning home. The psychological traumatization that was highly recorded among many American soldiers in Iraq led some of them to commit suicide and even kill their comrades. As considerable numbers of Iraqis and Americans, whether soldiers or civilians, have suffered from war trauma, a good number of these traumatized victims and survivors have attempted to express their war trauma (the invisible wound) andto testify to the experience of war. Art, especially literature, help traumatized victims and survivors to translate the implosion that tears them from inside but can’t be perceived by others into perceptible and tangible entity. Turner, Antoon and Al-Jubouri, who have been through the same experience of the war on Iraq, employ poetry to carry the burden of the psychical hurt that can be no longer kept in the “hurt locker,” to use Turner’s words. The poetic language and techniques help them set the hurt free from its psychic imprisonment. Poetry also enables these poets to document their stories to protect them from cultural codification and political hegemony that may work persistently for revising their stories and then retelling them in a different way. Thus, their testimonies are regarded as a subterranean resistance against war as well as political and cultural hegemonies that could pressure them to keep silent or retell a different story of the one they really experienced. This dissertation draws on trauma theory with reference to its political, cultural and social dimension, applying its psychoanalytic perspective of Freud, Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, Judith Herman and others to the poems of Turner, Antoon and Al-Jubouri. Through analyzing a number of poems written by the three poets about their traumatizing experience of war from a psychoanalytic perspective, the researcher shows how they brought the miseries, destruction and terror of the war on Iraq graphically and vividly to the reader through an victims and survivors’ eyes, as survivor-authors, in an attempt to unfold and speak aloud the untold truth of war, whose credibility is only available through those who have gone through such a horrible experience as themselves. Although the three poets are from different backgrounds, individual’s history and belong to two different cultures, the American and Iraqi culture, and are in the positions of the conqueror and the conquered they testify to the same traumatic war experience, the “war on terror” each in his own way. In other words, each poet testifies to the same experience of war from his own perspective. The dissertation is divided into an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion. The introduction entitled “The ‘War on Terror’: An Overview” briefly offers the background of the war on Iraq, including the reasons which led to this war and the reverberations inflicted on both Iraq and the United States. It focuses on the psychic traumatization that inflicted a great number of Iraqis and American soldiers as one of the disasters of this war that can’t be compensated for.Chapter one entitled “Art for Hurt’s Sake: Poetry, Testimony and Trauma” sets up the theoretical framework of the dissertation. It briefly offers an introduction about trauma theory and its development, especially in relation to literature. The chapter explores, in addition, the significance of literature, especially poetry in helping war victims and survivors transform their trauma into words and testify to the experience of war. The role of testimony as a means of healing as well as resistance is also tackled in this chapter. The chapter also broadens its scope to discuss whether the war trauma induced by the U.S. invasion of Iraq has turned into “cultural trauma” in Iraq or America or both. Chapter two, “American Soldiers Testify: Brian Turner Opens the ‘“Hurt Locker,’” explores a number of poems by Turner in an attempt to introduce and evaluate the harsh experience he went through as an American soldier in Iraq. Analyzing such poems reveals Turner’s traumatic experience, which resulted from going through near-death situations, terror, and many unbearable atrocities in a war ironically launched to achieve peace and eradicate “terrorism”. Chapter three “A Contextualization of Iraqis’ Collective War Trauma in Sinan Antoon’s Poems,” examines selected poems by Sinan Antoon to reveal the agony and distress he experiences as an Iraqi-American, who lives exiled in America witnessing broken-heartedly the destruction of his native country as a result of the illegitimate U.S.-led war against Iraq. Chapter Four “Traumatized Iraqi Women Testify: Amal Al-Jubouri’s Poetry” provides the reader with an analysis of a considerable number of poems by Al-Jubouri in an attempt to explore the traumatic experience she has gone through as an Iraqi woman, who has suffered years of war experience. It shows how Al-Jubouri introduces a gender-specific version of war. The conclusion sums up the findings of the dissertation and assesses how far have Turner, Antoon and Al-Jubouri been able to write their experiences caused by the same traumatic event, which is the “war on terror” on Iraq by employing various themes and techniques. |