This paper focuses on the current and ongoing engagement with slavery as a space for traumatic re... more This paper focuses on the current and ongoing engagement with slavery as a space for traumatic remembrance and explores how one’s sense of self and identity might be transformed by applying ethics to the remembrance of slavery. I reject the ideas central to trauma theory purported by Cathy Caruth (1991) that considers cultural trauma to be rooted in the tragic episode itself, arguing that it is driven by the strategic, practical and political interests of both nationalist discourses and the Black diaspora. By engaging with new thinking in cultural trauma proposed by Jeffrey C. Alexander (2004), I maintain that trauma is evoked through the effects of stories, narratives and images which are adopted and accepted as our history and attempt to look past the constructed slavery narratives premised on death and victimhood to reveal subjectivities that expose tropes of renewal, creative energy and agency. I further criticise trauma theory’s denial of unconscious fantasies and psychopolitic...
This paper focuses on the current and ongoing engagement with slavery as a space for traumatic re... more This paper focuses on the current and ongoing engagement with slavery as a space for traumatic remembrance and explores how one’s sense of self and identity might be transformed by applying ethics to the remembrance of slavery. I reject the ideas central to trauma theory purported by Cathy Caruth (1991) that considers cultural trauma to be rooted in the tragic episode itself, arguing that it is driven by the strategic, practical and political interests of both nationalist discourses and the Black diaspora. By engaging with new thinking in cultural trauma proposed by Jeffrey C. Alexander (2004), I maintain that trauma is evoked through the effects of stories, narratives and images which are adopted and accepted as our history and attempt to look past the constructed slavery narratives premised on death and victimhood to reveal subjectivities that expose tropes of renewal, creative energy and agency. I further criticise trauma theory’s denial of unconscious fantasies and psychopolitic...
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