“Like déjà vu in reverse” : Géologie de la pré-mémoire dans The Nuclear Age de Tim O’Brien

Abstract

In this paper, we intend to explore the story told by William Cowling, the narrator of The Nuclear Age. We first examine the weight of postmemory, a term used by Marianne Hirsch to denote the transmission of inter- and transgenerational memory. We will show that the legacy of such memory raises the issue of survivance and generates a vicarious trauma that stirs up another type of traumatic memory that we call pre‑memory. We use this term to refer to a memory filled with terrifying visions and “recollections” popping up from a future compromised by nuclear destruction. We will try to see to what extent the imaginarization of this “déjà vu in reverse” allows, to use Patrice A. Keats’ phrase, some kind of “trauma dispersion.”