Trauma and ritual: the transformation of the identity of the heroine in Zh. Aimauytuly’s novel Akbilek

The aim of this study is to analyze the means by which the traumatic experience and transformation of the protagonist are represented in the novel Akbilek Zhusipbek Aimauytuly. Aimauytuly’s writing strategy makes it possible to trace how ritual, custom, and initiation function as ways of articulating traumatic experience and overcoming it. The authors focus on the ways of processing trauma in a patriarchal Kazakh society through ritual. Ritual is used by the community to formalize the acquisition of a new status by a member of the collective, and in the case of a traumatic event experienced by the community, it serves as a means of symbolic restoration of the disrupted social order. The results of this study demonstrate that ritual actions can serve as a means of expressing and overcoming traumatic experiences, and that the duration of the consequences of trauma is often determined not only by the internal state of the traumatized individual, but also by the conditions and norms of society.