Teks Trauma dan Perlawanan: Analisis Semiotika Memoar Broken Strings Aurélie Moeremans

Abstract

This study examines how symbolic violence and trauma are represented and normalized in the memoir Broken Strings: Kepingan Masa Muda yang Patah by Aurélie Moeremans through Roland Barthes’ semiotic framework. Unlike previous studies that generally focus on explicit gender domination in popular media, this research specifically reveals how everyday language, silence, intimate spaces, and fragmented memories function as latent mechanisms of symbolic violence in autobiographical trauma narratives. Using a descriptive qualitative approach, the study analyzes narrative fragments related to emotional control, bodily representation, language of affection, and spatial domination through the levels of denotation, connotation, and myth. The findings show that violence in the memoir is constructed not primarily through explicit physical acts, but through symbolic signs embedded in romantic expressions, emotional dependency, and private spatial arrangements. At the mythological level, patriarchal ideology naturalizes domination by disguising control as affection and protection. This study offers a theoretical contribution by integrating Barthesian semiotics with trauma narrative studies to explain how trauma operates as a cultural sign system rather than merely an individual psychological experience. Furthermore, the memoir is positioned as a form of symbolic resistance in which fragmented narration becomes a strategy to reclaim bodily authority, voice, and subjectivity.