Coping with trauma in domestic migrant worker narratives: Linguistic, emotional and psychological perspectives

Abstract

Trauma can be defined as an event that goes beyond ordinary modes of experience and linguistic representation. It represents a break not just with a particular form of representation but with the possibility of representation at all. Drawing on a large corpus of domestic migrant worker narratives, the article analyses trauma narratives in which migrant women share their experiences while working for abusive employers. The stories deal with unspeakable suffering and humiliation, and the article attempts to outline the narrative structures that characterise trauma storytelling: broken narratives with voids in the narrative flow. It also analyses the emotional component of trauma narratives focusing on crying, which is seen as an authentication of feeling and meaning. Finally, the article considers how the women make sense of their traumatic experiences, and how peer support becomes essential in the narrators' attempts to rewrite their life stories from victimhood to survival and beyond. 創傷可定義為超越恆常經歷與語言表達的事件,其表達模式不但會脫離特定的形式,更可能完全談不上是一種表達行為。本文取材自一個結集大量外籍家庭傭工敍事的語料庫,分析女性外籍家傭表述如何受僱主虐待的創傷敍述。這些經歷記錄了令人髮指的傷痛與凌辱;本文嘗試分析此類創傷敍述的特有敍事結構:敍事流程破碎,中間每每留下段段空白。本文亦會分析創傷敍事的情感表述,聚焦痛哭這一行為,因為此種表現一般被認為是真實感覺與意義的佐證。最後,本文會探討女性如何理解自己的創傷經歷,而同儕支援又如何有效地協助敍事者走出受害者的陰霾,轉而以倖存者或更超然的態度重寫自己的親身經歷。