Love, Loss, and Liberation: Tracing Feminine Trauma and Political Awakening in Against the Loveless World

Abstract

The research investigates how feminine trauma and identity affect political awakening through Susan Abulhawa’s novel Against the Loveless World. The paper examines how Nahr converts her experiences of love, loss, and repression into political resistance and personal emancipation. The investigation is built upon Freud’s Afterwardness (Nachtraglichkeit), Lacan’s symbolic disruption and Caruth’s trauma approach to establish trauma as a political and temporal framework. The article analyzes displacement and patriarchal and wartime psychological effects through close textual analysis within a qualitative research framework. The study demonstrates that the trauma in the book shapes character growth by transforming Nahr from an oppressed subject into a person with political awareness. The analysis in the conclusion shows how Abulhawa uses her narrative to expose systemic oppression and present powerful examples of female strength. The research recommends additional analysis on Arab women’s literature due to its dual function in psychological and political resistance.