Trauma theory and postcolonial literary studies

Abstract

The plurality and growing number of responses to cultural trauma theory in postcolonial criticism demonstrate the ongoing appeal of trauma theory despite the fact that it is also increasingly critiqued as inadequate to the research agenda of postcolonial studies. In the dialogue between trauma theory and postcolonial literary studies the central question remains whether trauma theory can be effectively “postcolonialized” in the sense of being usefully conjoined with postcolonial theory. This article presents a detailed account of the core concepts and tenets of cultural trauma theory in order to contribute to a clearer understanding of the issues currently at stake in this developing relationship between trauma theory and postcolonial literary studies. It engages with fundamental issues, such as those deriving from trauma theory’s foundation in Freudian psychoanalysis; its Eurocentric orientation; its inherent contradictions, such as its deconstructionist aesthetics of aporia vs notions of therapeutic and recuperative narrativization; and its tendency to blur lines of distinction and to affirm stasis and melancholia as the empathic, responsible reception of trauma narratives. This article argues for a more precise, as well as more comprehensive, conceptualization of trauma and formulates possible directions in which to expand trauma’s conceptual framework, in order to respond more adequately to postcolonial ways of understanding history, memory and trauma.

Keywords:

• trauma
• postcolonialism
• memory
• Eurocentrism
• literary criticism

Notes

1. Trauma theory has not gained such centrality in other academic disciplines. Intellectual historian LaCapra discusses the lack of interest in philosophy and history in some detail in History in Transit (106–83).

2. To note, among others, David Attwood, Elleke Boehmer, Ruth Leys, Achille Mbembe, and Anne Whitehead.

3. For a detailed discussion of the complexity of this history, see Leys, Trauma (2000).

4. See Bracken and Patty.

5. Leys states that this is unquestionably its foundation, even if researchers in the field of trauma studies now prefer to assume that Freud’s work “has been completely superseded” (Trauma 11). Luckhurst suggests that the ongoing marginalization of Freud’s theories may cause the decline of trauma theory (211).

6. In summarizing the early and late formulations of trauma as they are relevant to the discussion of Caruth, Felman and other trauma theorists, I have had to exclude the many intricacies of Freud’s formulations and reformulations as well as the substantial re-working of his theories by later scientists. For this, see Leys, Trauma.

7. With respect to Caruth’s reading of Freud, Leys’ detailed, rigorous examination demonstrates many flaws, as for instance Caruth’s failure to acknowledge that Freud rejected the notion that traumatic symptoms are caused by an external reality (Trauma 272).

8. It may be necessary to add that there is no mention of this murder in Jewish scripture or historical accounts. Luckhurst and Leys both doubt the value of Moses and Monotheism for present theorization. As Luckhurst writes, “largely ungrounded speculations such as this on prehistory were typical of Victorian anthropology” (10); Leys shows that Caruth misreads Freud’s text by partially quoting passages and omitting crucial phrases in what Leys terms “glaring alterations” (Trauma 282).

9. Moreover, there is also evidence that readers and viewers of traumatic material are not in fact impacted to any serious degree. Visual evidence of human suffering provided by the photographs of torture in the Abu Ghraib jail in 2004 evoked no political protest or upsurge of emotion in the United States, but rather a relative indifference, as a study by Eisenman demonstrated. Luckhurst, referring to this study, speculates whether this may be due to the expansive “rise and rise” of the trauma paradigm, which now “shockingly fails to address atrocity, genocide and war” and concludes that “notions of ‘cultural trauma’ might block pathways to practical politics” (212–13).

10. This follows from Caruth’s reading, in Unclaimed Experience, of the Tancred and Clorinda myth which assigns the role of trauma victim to the murderer, Tancred. While psychic traumatization incurred by perpetrators is a very real phenomenon, it would need to be differentiated from other forms of traumatization.

11. See Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory.

12. See Mukherjee.