Abstract
This article is a discussion of J. G. Ballard’s (semi-)autobiographical war narratives, with a focus on the different textual strategies and processes of signification Ballard employs from his avant-garde novel The Atrocity Exhibition (1970) to the feverish fictional account of his time in World War II China in “The Dead Time” (1977)Ballard, J. G. “The Dead Time”. Myths of the Near Future. Cape, 1982, pp. 144-163. and Empire of the Sun (1984)Ballard, J. G. Empire of the Sun. Gollancz, 1984. to his more reflective autobiographical texts The Kindness of Women (1990)Ballard, J. G. The Kindness of Women. Farrar, 1991. and Miracles of Life (2008)Ballard, J. G. Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: An Autobiography. Harper, 2008.. Ballard’s obsessive repetition of many of the same images attests to the problematics of representation of the traumatic event, and ultimately represents a complex and rich work of fabulation that escapes categorizations of fiction and autobiography.
Keywords
war fiction; trauma; autobiography; psychoanalysis