Demystifying trauma in international relations theory

Tavares Furtado, Henrique; Auchter, Jessica

Abstract

Recent work on trauma and memory in IR has sought to emphasise the key role trauma plays in state and community formation, security policies, the mediatisation of atrocities, and transitional and social justice. This paper problematises the doxology of trauma in this body of work: the assumptions about the traumatic that go without saying because they come without saying in the discipline. We counter, in particular, IR’s unreflective consumption of Cathy Caruth’s paradigm of trauma as an incomprehensible shock. In this paper, we excavate the contours, origins, and effects of this doxology. We first use the examples of post-conflict struggles for truth and reconciliation and the Covid-19 pandemic to illustrate that IR’s vision of trauma centralises a psychiatric and medicalised paradigm of governance and management that depoliticises suffering. We then seek to provide an alternative account of trauma woven in dialogue with the psychoanalytical reflections of Francophone and Lusophone scholars in the Black Radical Tradition, particularly Fanon, Mbembe, Kilomba, Nascimento and Gonzalez. The goal is to move from a theory of trauma-as-event to an understanding of (colonial/racial) trauma as it appears in the writings of those who never felt protected or at peace in the white colonial order.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 5, 2024
• Deposit Date: Aug 22, 2024
• Print ISSN: 0967-0106
• Electronic ISSN: 1460-3640
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/12043309