A memória do trauma, a partir do testemunho no livro “A guerra não tem rosto de mulher”

Abstract

This undergraduate thesis aims to analyze the relationship between memory, trauma, and gender in the book War Does Not Have a Woman's Face, by Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich. The research starts from the realization that the traditional historiography of World War II, focused on military strategies and heroism, constructed a predominantly male narrative that silenced the experience of Soviet female combatants. Using Freudian psychoanalysis on trauma as a theoretical framework, as well as gender and memory studies by authors such as Johnny Roberto Rosa, Linda Nicholson, and A. M. Steinbach, the study investigates how trauma is inscribed in female testimony. The analysis demonstrates that the “female war”, as recorded by Alexievich through Oral History, differs radically from the official narrative, being marked by a “history of feelings” and the sensory record of pain. It discusses the process of social silencing imposed on veterans in the post-war period, the traumatic defeminization of bodies at the front, and the psychic difficulty of narrating horror. It is concluded that Alexievich's work acts as a space for working through trauma, allowing repressed and stigmatized memories to be transformed into historical testimony, breaking with decades of oblivion and revealing the human and painful face of the conflict.