Postcolonial Witnessing Trauma Out of Bounds

Despite a stated commitment to cross-cultural solidarity, trauma theoryan area of cultural investigation that emerged out of the 'ethical turn' affecting the humanities in the 1990sis marked by a Eurocentric, monocultural bias. This book takes issue with the tendency of the founding texts of the field to marginalize or ignore traumatic experiences of non-Western or minority groups, and to take for granted the universal validity of definitions of trauma and recovery that have developed out of the history of Western modernity. Moreover, it questions the assumption that a modernist aesthetic of fragmentation and aporia is uniquely suited to the task of bearing witness to trauma, and criticizes the neglect of the connections between metropolitan and non-Western or minority traumas. Combining theoretical argument with literary case studies, Postcolonial Witnessing contends that the suffering engendered by colonialism needs to be acknowledged more fully, on its own terms, in its own terms, and in relation to traumatic First World histories if trauma theory is to have any hope of redeeming its promise of cross-cultural ethical engagement.

STEF CRAPS is a Research Professor in English Literature at Ghent University, Belgium, where he directs the Centre for Literature and Trauma. He is the author of Trauma and Ethics in the Novels of Graham Swift: No Short-Cuts to Salvation (2005).

Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Trauma of Empire
The Empire of Trauma
Beyond Trauma Aesthetics

Ordinary Trauma in Sindiwe Magona's Mother to Mother
Mid-Mourning in David Dabydeen's 'Turner' and Fred D'Aguiar's Feeding the Ghosts
Cross-Traumatic Affiliation
Jewish/Postcolonial Diasporas in the Work of Caryl Phillips
Entangled Memories in Anita Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index