Digital Object Identifier
This article examines Hadi Al-Abdullah’s memoir Critical Conditions: My Diary of the Syrian Revolution (2011-2019) as an ethical trauma narrative documenting the psychological, spatial, and narrative afterlives of the Syrian uprising. Drawing on Cathy Caruth’s theory of traumatic belatedness, Avishek Parui’s concept of slippery memory, and John Paul Lederach’s conflict transformation paradigm, the study argues that Al-Abdullah expresses trauma through delayed recognition, narrative fragmentation, and material haunting rather than linear recollection or closure, as well as resilience. Focusing on the author’s experiences of injury, loss, and frontline war journalism, the article examines how personal testimony mediates between subjective suffering and collective memory formation. It further argues how the memoir transforms individual trauma into an ethical practice of witness that resists the authoritarian regime and contributes to peacebuilding as an ongoing relational process. The findings of this article underscore the significance of personal narratives in peacebuilding processes and highlight the role of storytelling in shaping collective consciousness and societal reform in post-conflict contexts.
Tami Aisha. “From War to Words: Trauma, Memory, and Transformation in Hadi Al-Abdullah’s Critical Conditions: My Diary of the Syrian Revolution.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 2, Apr. 2026, pp. 81–103. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n2.6.
Open Access · CC BY 4.0 · Crossref DOI ·
the-criterion.com