Liquefactions : River floods and Tides of Memory in Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces

Abstract

In my article on Anne Michaels' fictional work Fugitive Pieces, I introduce the critical concept of liquefaction as thematic leitmotiv that connects psychological, transgenerational trauma to large-scale environmental catastrophes (like floods and hurricanes) across time and place, and across international, national and domestic spaces. Through this central trope, I show how psychological post-traumatic healing in Holocaust survivors and geologic post-traumatic healing operate in tandem in the novel, more precisely how the figurative unearthing and working through of traumatic memory across generations parallels the literal unearthing and re-situating of archaeological artefacts across geologic time. The interconnectedness of psychological wounds with geological wounds demonstrates the ethics of nature - a kind of co-healing of persons and places across generations and landscapes (both transgenerational and transhistorical). I also point out the restitutive ethics of nature and maintain that floods manifest themselves as counterhistoric agents able to reveal and restore historic truth through obscuration and disclosure.