The Question of “Solidarity” in Postcolonial Trauma Fiction: Beyond the Recognition Principle

Abstract

Dominant theorizations of cultural trauma often appeal to the twinned notions of "recognition" and "solidarity", suggesting that by inviting readers to recognize distant suffering, trauma narratives enable forms of cross-cultural solidarity to emerge. This paper explores and critiques that argument with reference to postcolonial literature. It surveys four areas of postcolonial trauma, examining works that narrate traumatic experiences of the colonized, colonizers, perpetrators and proletarians. It explores how novelists locate traumatic affects in the body, and suggests that Frantz Fanon's model of racial trauma in Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth remains essential for the interpretation of postcolonial texts, including those to which it is not usually applied. The analysis further reveals tensions between different texts' appeals for recognition, and suggests that these tensions problematize the claim that solidarity will emerge from sympathetic engagement with trauma victims. As such, the paper makes three key arguments: first, that trauma offers a productive ground for comparing postcolonial fiction; second, that comparison uncovers problems for theorists attempting to "decolonize" trauma studies; and third, that trauma theory needs to be supplemented with systemic material analyses of particular contexts if it is not to obfuscate what makes postcolonial traumas distinct.

Facing the Other: Representations of Postcolonial Childhood Trauma in Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things and Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines

“…Visser (2015) points out that the origins of cultural trauma theory are Eurocentric and that traditional "event-based models of trauma" did not account for 'the sustained and long process of the trauma of colonialism" (p. 256). Using Fanon's work as the foundation for his exploration of postcolonial trauma, Dalley (2015) states that "few intellectual fields seem to have as much to offer each other as trauma and postcolonial studies. From its origins in Freud, the language of trauma theory relies on an imagery of invasion that brings it close to postcolonial studies' concern with empire" (p. 375).…”

Fathers in and Against Pain: Father’s Interruptions of Settler-Colonial Technologies of Loss

“…Recognizing victims’ narratives is crucial because recognition forms the basis for transnational solidarity (Dalley, 2015). Colonial encounters connect disparate experiences of pain and create sociopolitical ties across cultures (Dalley, 2015; Zia, 2020). Such experiences contribute to collective politics, suggesting that mourning fuels people’s resistance, and viscerally connects people’s struggles, giving rise to “affective solidarity” (Zia, 2020).…”

“…Recognizing victims’ narratives is crucial because recognition forms the basis for transnational solidarity (Dalley, 2015). Colonial encounters connect disparate experiences of pain and create sociopolitical ties across cultures (Dalley, 2015; Zia, 2020).…”