This volume examines the relationship between oneiric and historical episodes of atrocity in twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, film, literature and theatre. Examining the political and aesthetic power harnessed by dreams in dark times, it takes as its subject the significance granted to the oneiric beyond Freudian psychoanalysis. -- .
Psychoanalysis has venerated oneiric life while confining it to dominant theories of fulfilment and unconscious desire. But as the contributors to this volume show, the power of dreams extends into the spheres of art, politics and history.
Exploring the status of the oneiric beyond psychoanalysis, Dreams and atrocity synthesises interdisciplinary perspectives from literary criticism, medical humanities, memory and cultural studies, history and art practice. It sheds new light on dreams as modes of psychic resistance and historical witness as well as symptoms of trauma in modern and contemporary representations of atrocity. Central to the volume is the oneiric's potential to awaken us to the violence of our contemporary world - providing us with the means not only of diagnosing but also responding to historical episodes of atrocity, from twentieth-century genocide to contemporary racism and transphobia. The contributors develop new ways of reading the dreamlike in cultural works, foregrounding its power as an aesthetic mode and political tool.
Organised into three parts - 'Dream images', 'Dreams as sites of resistance' and 'Violent states' - the book conducts a timely enquiry into the role of the unconscious in processing and illustrating atrocity in an increasingly violent world. It attends to the significance of dreams in dark times, illuminating the triangulated relationship between dream life, memory and trauma.
