الرؤية السردية بوصفها تمثيلًا للصدمة النفسية: دراسة تحليلية في روايتي خالد خليفة “لا سكاكين في مطابخ هذه المدينة ” و”الموت عمل شاق”

الرؤية السردية بوصفها تمثيلًا للصدمة النفسية: دراسة تحليلية في روايتي خالد خليفة “لا سكاكين في مطابخ هذه المدينة ” و”الموت عمل شاق“

هند محمد عبد السّلام نظمي رمّوز
الأستاذ الدكتور نادر جمعة قاسم
جامعة النجاح الوطنيّة

Abstract
This study aims to analyze narrative perspective as a tool for representing trauma and censorship in Khaled Khalifa’s novels No Knives in the Kitchens of This City and Death Is Hard Work. It does so by interrogating the function of the narrator, the deployment of narrative pronouns, and the extent to which these elements shape reception and the representation of collective pain. The study proceeds from the hypothesis that narrative perspective in both novels does not serve a merely technical function; rather, it articulates an existential and psychological stance toward experiences of repression and fragmentation in modern Syrian reality, particularly in the post-revolutionary context.
The study adopts an analytical–descriptive methodology that integrates structural narratology with trauma theory as developed by Cathy Caruth and Anne Whitehead. It demonstrates how trauma is embodied in language and narrative through shifts in narrative pronouns, manifestations of silence, and the transgression of conventional narrative boundaries. The findings reveal that the use of the first-person pronoun in No Knives in the Kitchens of This City signifies an individualized trauma embedded within an authoritarian system, whereas the predominance of the third-person pronoun in Death Is Hard Work reflects the transformation of trauma into a collective tragedy.
The study concludes that narrative perspective evolves from a narrative technique into a form of resistant cultural discourse, reconfiguring power as a monologic voice that enforces silence upon individuals, while portraying the narrator as an observer or witness to the tragedy of a nation descending into the abyss.
Keywords: narrative perspective, trauma literature, censorship, Khaled Khalifa, narrator, Syria, narrative pronouns, silence