Abstract
This chapter argues that we are currently witnessing a shift away from the trauma paradigm toward a new, post-trauma paradigm that manifests itself most strongly in the concept of resilience. Among the potential meanings and possibilities of trauma, resilience is being hailed as the quality that individuals, communities, and whole societies must possess in order to survive and thrive in a world of ubiquitous risk and crisis. While it draws on recent research from psychology and the social sciences, the chapter primarily aims to contribute to an understanding of the ways in which resilience - both in the individual psychological and in the social-ecological sense - is significantly constructed through narratives. Discussing various literary (e.g., Chris Cleave’s The Other Hand) and non-literary examples of resilience narratives, the chapter sketches out a cultural narratology of resilience that would enable us to come to terms with the narrative strategies and techniques as well as the cultural values, patterns, assumptions, ideologies, political agendas, and societal norms implicated in those stories.
