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

Hamish Dalley

doi:10.3390/h4030369

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.

Highlights

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun is a significant example of postcolonial trauma fiction, a text that examines the complexities of representing catastrophe in non-metropolitan contexts
Adichie’s work is an archetypal case of what Roger Luckhurst calls our “contemporary trauma culture” ([2], p. 2)—a set of affective dispositions and publishing norms that promote, and sometimes problematize, aesthetic engagement with the pain of others
As the remainder of this paper shows, postcolonial literature is replete with works that represent traumatic suffering, inviting readers to recognize characters’ pain, and—perhaps—to use that recognition as the basis for cross-cultural, transnational, or global solidarity

Summary

Introduction

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun is a significant example of postcolonial trauma fiction, a text that examines the complexities of representing catastrophe in non-metropolitan contexts. Healing comes when the traumatized victim finds validation through recognition, and a narrative that makes sense of her experience, but turns it into the basis for interpersonal solidarity (see [8]) In her joyful assertion of restored subjectivity, Olanna observes students burning effigies of Nigerian President Gowon, and feels “with a sweet surge that they all felt what she felt, [...] as though it were liquid steel instead of blood that flowed through her veins” The field is predicated on its critique of the epistemic violence that occurs when metropolitan formulations (like Freud’s theories) are treated as trans-human universals This branch of postcolonialism avows the singularity of the other’s experience (see [28]), and stands opposed to the aggression of the demand that the “subaltern speak” in language amenable to our recognition [29]. What is at stake here is whether the links trauma draws between disparate subject positions amount to anything of substance: whether or not, that is, they form a basis for achieving what Said sees as Fanon’s ultimate goal—to go beyond colonial trauma to a form of solidarity that would “bind the European as well as the native together in a new non-adversarial community of awareness and anti-imperialism” ([26], p. 274)

The Ambivalence of Recognition

Aggressive Recognition

The Limits of Recognition

Beyond Recognition

Conclusions