'The unforgettable forgotten': The traces of trauma in Herta Muller's 'Reisende auf einem Bein'

Trauma can be read as a metaphor of the (post)modern condition, particularly in a German context. This is because it is associated with aporias in memory and understanding which are nevertheless meaningful because they arise from and speak of specific historical circumstances. This article place Herta Muller's 1989 Berlin novel Reisende auf einem Bein within the context of twentieth-century trauma literature. I read the protagonist, Irene, as a traumatised individual, whose experience (in Ceausescu's Romania, then as an ethnic German immigrant in West Berlin) is locatable, but the causes of whose trauma elude representation because they are not synthesisable into frameworks of understanding. Irene comes to accommodate her trauma by inhabiting her surroundings and renouncing control--while reasserting agency. Thus the structure of trauma provides a way out of the perceived paralysis of postmodern constructions of subjectivity. Finally the novel bears witness to 'the unforgettable forgotten'.