Introduction: Postcolonial Trauma Novels

Abstract

Trauma studies, an area of cultural investigation that came to prominence in the early-to-mid-1990s, prides itself on its explicit commitment to ethics, which sets it apart from the poststructuralist criticism of the 1970s and early 1980s in which it has its roots. Standing accused of irrelevance or indifference to “real-world” issues such as history, politics, and ethics because of its predominantly epistemological focus, this earlier, “textualist” paradigm was largely eclipsed around the mid-1980s by overtly historicist or culturalist approaches, including new historicism, cultural materialism, cultural studies, and various types of advocacy criticism (feminist, lesbian and gay, Marxist, and postcolonial). Trauma studies can with some justification be regarded as the reinvention in an ethical guise of this much maligned textualism. Cathy Caruth, one of the leading figures in trauma studies (along with Shoshana Felman, Geoffrey Hartman, and Dominick LaCapra), counters the oft-heard critique of poststructuralism outlined above by arguing that, rather than leading us away from history and into “political and ethical paralysis” (Unclaimed 10), a textualist approach can afford us unique access to history. Indeed, it makes possible a “rethinking of reference,” which aims not at “eliminating history” but at “resituating it in our understanding, that is, at permitting history to arise where immediate understanding may not” (11). By bringing the insights of deconstructive and psychoanalytic scholarship to the analysis of cultural artifacts that bear witness to traumatic histories, critics can gain access to extreme events and experiences that defy understanding and representation. Caruth insists on the ethical significance of this critical practice. She claims that “the language of trauma, and the silence of its mute repetition of suffering, profoundly and imperatively demand” a “new mode of reading and of listening” (9) that would allow us to pass out of the isolation imposed on both individuals and cultures by traumatic experience. In “a catastrophic age” such as ours, according to Caruth, “trauma itself may provide the very link between cultures” (“Trauma” 11). With trauma forming a bridge between disparate historical experiences, so the argument goes, listening to the trauma of another can contribute to cross-cultural solidarity and to the creation of new forms of community. Remarkably, however, trauma studies’ stated commitment to the promotion of cross-cultural ethical engagement is not borne out by the founding texts of the field (including Caruth’s own work), which are almost exclusively concerned with traumatic experiences of white Westerners and solely employ critical methodologies emanating from a Euro-American context.¹ Instead of promoting solidarity between different cultures, trauma studies risks producing the very opposite effect as a result of this one-sided focus: by ignoring or marginalizing non-Western traumatic events and histories and non-Western theoretical work, trauma studies may actually assist in the perpetuation of Eurocentric views and structures that maintain or widen the gap between the West and the rest of the world. If, as Caruth argues, “history is precisely the way we are implicated in each other’s traumas” (Unclaimed 24), then Western traumatic histories must be seen to be tied up with histories of colonial trauma for trauma studies to be able to redeem its promise of ethical effectiveness. Attempts to give the suffering engendered by colonial oppression its “traumatic due” have begun to be made in various disciplines in recent years. Mental health professionals, for example, are becoming increasingly aware of the need to acknowledge traumatic experiences in non-Western settings and to take account of cultural differences in the treatment of trauma. These concerns are reflected in the titles of two recent collections of essays: Trauma and Dissociation in a Cross-Cultural Perspective: Not Just a North American Phenomenon (2006) and Honoring Differences: Cultural Issues in the Treatment of Trauma and Loss (1999).² Concurrently, taking their cue from such thinkers as Aimé Césaire and Hannah Arendt, historians working in the fledgling field of comparative genocide studies–including A. Dirk Moses, David Moshman, Dan Stone, and Jürgen Zimmerer–have complicated the notion of Holocaust uniqueness by situating other, mainly colonial, atrocities in relation to the Shoah. Moreover, postcolonial critics and theorists like Kamran Aghaie, Jill Bennett, Victoria Burrows, Sam Durrant, Leela Gandhi, Linda Hutcheon, Rosanne Kennedy...