Beyond a psychologistic trauma: a sense-based approach to the study of affect

ABSTRACT

Taking trauma as an affect, this article discusses how body-matter assemblages can impact affect. Based on an ethnography of conflict-related loss and grieving from postwar Sri Lanka, it examines nuances of affective becomings, explicating a complex process that involves bodies, things, and spaces charged with intensities and in motion. The article also highlights the methodological challenges of studying such bodily processes. Based on that discussion, the article summons an approach to the study of trauma that re-engages with senses as a means of studying the nonverbal and nonconscious.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• body
• materiality
• postwar
• trauma
• senses
• Sri Lanka

Notes

¹ Affect is “irreducibly bodily and autonomic” (Massumi 2002, p. 28). See Leys (2011) for a critic of Massumi’s theorization of autonomous affect.

² For a detailed discussion on relational affect, see also Brennan (2004), Clough (2010), Hemmings (2005), Navaro-Yashin (2012).

³ The data for this paper come from my PhD research project on trauma and everyday living in the post-war context of Sri Lanka.

⁴ The younger generation is, however, increasingly moving away from agriculture. For the most part, the youth find employment outside the village, with private companies and industries such as garment factories, and private security firms. Running three-wheels on hire is also a common means of income.

⁵ A chena is an area of original or secondary land cleared and cultivated for only a few years and then abandoned.

⁶ Samurdhi is a state sponsored program with the aim of reducing poverty.

⁷ The current paper does not allow me the space for a detailed account of the different instances of violence that Sri Lanka experienced. For a more descriptive examination of the ethnic/communal violent crises in the country, see Daniel (1996), Gamage (2007), Jayawardena (1984), Kapferer (2012), Manor (1979), McGowen (1992), Moore (1985), Spencer (1990), Tambiah (1992), and Travick (2007).

⁸ I worked as a clinical supervisor and a psychosocial trainer for several non-governmental organizations in and around Wilgoda during the civil war period and after its end.

⁹ Both Ananda and Malani spoke Sinhala fluently.

¹⁰ Death-aid society of Wilgoda is a highly functional village committee that aids the community members in situations of death.

¹¹ Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, the terrorist group who fought with the Sri Lankan state military for several decades, to establish a separate land for the Tamils.

¹² Ananda was not one of my clients.