Other Cultures of Trauma

This book deals with an area of scholarship attracting interdisciplinaryinterest: the field of trauma studies. It is a project that focuses both on thepsychodynamics of trauma and its political and historical contexts. It drawsfrom and reformulates psychoanalytical theory but refuses an easytherapeutic approach to pain and suffering and an easy claim to collective(especially national) suffering as in the wake of 9/11. Taking a long historicalview but focusing particularly on contemporary experiences of trauma theauthor seeks to expose the metropolitanism of contemporary trauma theoryand to reverse or at least challenge that trend by looking at the ways inwhich poscolonial non-metropolitan literatures about trauma can questionEuro-centered trauma theories and practices that are often presented asuniversal. These critical literatures come from Native America Algeria and theCaribbean. This book is addressed to thinkers and writers in all area studiesprograms that attend to the historical and contemporary dynamics of traumaand its consequences.