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Trauma Of A Perpetrator: Reimagining Perpetrators In Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker, Marinda Quist

Theses and Dissertations

This article studies the possibility of perpetrator trauma in Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker. The article gives a brief historical background of the political violence in Haiti that occurred under the Duvalier dictatorship and focuses specifically on the role of Tonton Macoutes, the violent enforcers of much of Duvalier's oppression. Drawing on trauma theory, the article argues that perpetrators have been very little studied within trauma studies because of the possible moral implications of giving research time to individuals who have often chosen their own path of violence. Along with theorists such as Kali Tal and Dominick LaCapra, this article …