Running Thoughts on Trauma
This text was constructed from my responses to conversations and correspondence with Garrett Laroy Johnson, Colin Stragar-Rice, Alisha Sharma, Quincéy Xavier, and Ylfa Muindi. I owe each of them many thanks.
I.
Global apartheid and planetary ecocide are here, now. The reckless disregard for life that has brought us to this point has been called inexplicable by some and inevitable by others, but it is neither. The various rationales deployed to explain and justify people’s inability to care about ongoing genocides, ethnocides, and ecocides are, in fact, symptoms of anxieties stemming from unresolved traumas.
In Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, Freud proposed that our egos produce anxiety to prevent us from acting spontaneously in ways that might harm us. The ego achieves this by recalling images of past experiences that simulate anticipated harms. When these images evoke trauma, the super-ego enters the picture, censoring, repressing, and distorting the images before they fully surface. The result is this: the ego recalls images that provoke anxiety, keeping us from acting spontaneously, while the super-ego ensures we cannot fully make sense of the anxiety’s origins. In this state of confusion, we rationalize our inability to act spontaneously, constructing abstract justifications to explain why we shouldn’t act.
For the traumatized person, this process can make caring itself feel dangerous. When the urge to care arises, the ego calls forth images of past experiences that associate caring with harm, but the super-ego suppresses and distorts these memories, leaving the person unable to make sense of their apprehension. Instead of confronting the source of their fear, they turn to abstract reasoning to justify why they shouldn’t care.
Anyone who uses abstract reasoning to justify denying themselves or others care is a traumatized person rationalizing their apprehensions. Freudian psychoanalysis teaches us that the only valid justifications for withholding care are rooted in concrete experiences, not abstract reasoning. It is imperative, therefore, to dismiss the abstract justifications we create for our inability to care and uncover the concrete experiences that inhibit us.
Here lies the crux of the matter: the way to get people to affirm ideological or mythical reasons for denying care is to (i) traumatize them in some way, (ii) let their traumas fester unresolved, and (iii) manipulate their traumas. All genocidal, ethnocidal, and ecocidal power formations operate by exposing different groups to distinct traumas that inhibit their ability to care for one another or to form meaningful relationships. This division creates the conditions for one group to dominate and eliminate others under the guise of ideological or mythical rationales.
Imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy—the power formation driving global apartheid and planetary ecocide—stratifies societies by race, sex, and economic class. It achieves this by subjecting individuals to distinct traumas based on these categories, ensuring that (i) they cannot properly care for or defer to one another, and (ii) they will affirm racist, sexist, and classist ideologies that rationalize their inability to care. Speak to anyone indifferent to—or complicit in—global apartheid and planetary ecocide, and you will find them ascribing to these ideologies and myths. Put them on the couch, and you will find their ideologies are symptoms of their unresolved traumas.
The way forward is clear, if difficult. We must reject the abstract reasoning that justifies our inability to care and confront the concrete traumas that underlie it. The ideologies driving global apartheid and planetary ecocide thrive on the scars of unresolved trauma. Healing those scars is not just a psychological necessity—it is a political and ethical imperative. Only by addressing these traumas can we begin to dismantle the systems they uphold. Only by rediscovering our capacity to care—freely, spontaneously, and collectively—can we imagine and build a world beyond apartheid and ecocide.
II.
The Freudian two-step for treating trauma proceeds as follows: (i) get the traumatized individual to recognize that their rationalizations for not caring for themselves and others are cover-ups for underlying traumas, and (ii) get them to become aware of the traumas they are simultaneously recalling and repressing whenever they feel inhibited about caring. This approach is a good start but does not go far enough. Building on the insights of Frantz Fanon, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and others, we must take the treatment of trauma one step further: the traumatized individual must come to recognize whether, and how, their trauma was produced by a process of traumatization that serves a prevailing power formation.
Put simply, the individual must ask: Was I traumatized to sustain a social system that thrives on division, on preventing care and solidarity across boundaries of race, gender, or class? If so, they must identify the ways in which their trauma supports stratification—how it ensures that differing social groups refrain from mixing, mingling, and spontaneously caring for one another. This third step is critical because without confronting the power formations that produce and perpetuate traumatization, any resolution of an individual trauma will remain incomplete. Left unchallenged, these power formations will continue to re-traumatize individuals, ensuring the persistence of social stratification.
Take, for example, the proliferation of white male mass shooters in the United States—a chilling illustration of how certain white males are subjected to specific traumas that render them unable to care for others’ lives. Solving this problem requires more than critiquing the ideologies and myths these shooters ascribe to, or empathizing with their individual experiences of trauma. What is needed is a deeper inquiry into the social context: How do white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal power formations produce these traumas, and to what end?
The answer lies in recognizing that these power formations traumatize white males in ways that encourage domination and violence rather than care. Simultaneously, they traumatize others—particularly Black and Indigenous peoples—in ways that discourage resistance, teaching them to accept domination and even erasure. These interconnected processes of traumatization maintain the hierarchies that sustain the system as a whole.
Moreover, there can be no treating the traumas of the oppressor without addressing the traumas of the oppressed. The potential white male mass shooter’s trauma is inextricably linked to the traumas of those he is most likely to target. These traumas are conditioned by interlocked systems of oppression, including white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy. Addressing one without the other will always be insufficient because these traumas do not exist in isolation—they are part of a broader, systemic apparatus designed to prevent care, solidarity, and liberation.
What is needed, then, is a collective effort to dismantle the power formations that produce and exploit trauma. To address trauma meaningfully is to counter the systems that stratify societies and perpetuate violence. It is to create the conditions where care—spontaneous, free, and collective—is no longer an exception but the foundation of our shared existence.
III.
Caring for ourselves and others is our default setting. However, none of us can care equally for everything, everywhere, all at once. At any given moment, we must prioritize certain people, places, or things over others. It’s crucial, however, not to confuse prioritizing one over another with claiming that one deserves care while another deserves indifference or harm. “Over and above” is not the same as “over and against.”
Self-care is about recognizing and honoring the evolving limits of our capacity to care for others. It requires learning to prioritize who or what to care for at any given moment, so as to avoid burnout. These choices of prioritization are rarely rational; they are shaped by affect—by the degree to which we find ourselves enchanted or drawn to certain people, places, and things. The abstract reasons we use to explain or justify our priorities are often just symptoms of this enchantment, reflecting how certain people, places, or things have captured our attention more deeply than others.
Processes of traumatization shape our affects in profound ways. They can make certain people, places, or things appear overwhelmingly enchanting, while rendering others almost entirely devoid of allure. To claim that X doesn’t deserve care—that it deserves indifference or harm—is often a sign that one has been traumatized against caring for X. Conversely, to insist that X is “the only thing in the world worth caring for” often signals a trauma-bond—an extreme form of attachment to X shaped by traumatic experiences. People in trauma-bonds frequently overextend their care for X to the point of burnout, while simultaneously neglecting or abusing themselves or others in the process.
Those who have begun to overcome trauma approach care with a more balanced sensibility. They might say, “Given that I can only care so much at any given time, and given that X is presently the most enchanting person, place, or thing to me, I am prioritizing X. But this doesn’t mean that X is the only thing I care about. I care more for X right now and less for other things, but I still care for other things to varying degrees. Some things matter more to me now, but everything matters to me.” For them, priority is not a synonym for exclusivity.
Moreover, people who have overcome trauma are open and honest about the role their sensibilities play in shaping their priorities. When asked why they prioritize one person, place, or thing over another, they point to their sensibilities and the formative experiences that have shaped them—including traumatic experiences. They do not claim to be making purely rational decisions or adhering to moral absolutes. Instead, they situate their sensibilities within the broader social contexts in which they were formed, acknowledging the power formations that have shaped those contexts.
Such individuals might say, “Let me share with you the experiences that have led me to prioritize X. Let me put these experiences in context for you.” In doing so, they bring a fuller awareness to the interplay between their personal histories, their social conditions, and the systems of power that structure them. This awareness enables them to care in ways that are not only honest and grounded but also attuned to the broader dynamics of society, where care itself is often shaped—and constrained—by the forces of domination and resistance.
IV.
To use myself as an example, my apprehensions and anxieties around meritocratic distinctions can be traced directly to the trauma of being routinely beaten as a child for failing to achieve or behave in ways that would mark me as a Black person of distinction—someone exceptional, someone who might escape the grim fate of being just another Black body in Amerikkka. Situating this trauma within its broader social context requires recognizing the power formations that systematically traumatize Black children, conditioning them to grow into adults who struggle to care for themselves. These formations instill a deep belief that failing to meet the “superior” standards of achievement set by wealthy white men is a moral failing—a failure that justifies exposure to harm, whether through the “accidents” of systemic neglect or as collateral damage in the pursuit of society’s relentless optimization.
Yet this trauma is not merely personal—it is ancestral. The colonial project brought both new deprivations and new logics of corporal punishment to Africa, inflicting traumas that reverberate across generations. My father, his father, and his father’s father all carried the scars of these traumas, which conditioned them to accept that any Black person lacking distinction, who refused submission to the colonizer’s administration, was marked for death—whether through direct violence (murder by commission) or systemic neglect (murder by omission). My father, born into the post-WWII famines of Tanzania, internalized these ancestral traumas and transmitted them to me in the form of beatings. Yet I know, too, that physical violence is not necessary for this transmission: ancestral traumas seep into the present through subtler channels—emotional unavailability, neglect, and silences too weighty to name.
This is the insidious nature of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy: after more than five centuries, it no longer requires fresh wounds to perpetuate its domination. It sustains itself through the steady, subtle transmission of ancestral traumas, recycled across generations. Though it continues to inflict new violences, it increasingly relies on the inheritance of old wounds, ensuring that the patterns of harm remain intact. Simultaneously, it obstructs the healing of these inherited traumas by severing peoples from the rituals, practices, and spaces that enable communion with their ancestors and the repair of their histories.
Consider, for instance, the case of the white male mass shooter. His actions are inseparable from ancestral traumas—traumas that have, over generations, conditioned white men to actively participate in or passively accept projects of genocide, ethnocide, and ecocide under the banners of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy. Addressing this phenomenon requires more than critiquing his ideologies or enacting gun control laws. Such measures may reduce the symptoms of his trauma, but they will not heal its root causes. As long as his ancestral traumas render him incapable of caring for others, and as long as his potential victims remain burdened by their own traumas—traumas that condition them to accept domination—acts of violence will persist, whether by commission or omission.
Indeed, many white men are merely waiting for the “legitimate” justification to commit or support mass violence. The white male mass shooter is simply one who refuses to wait for authorization, choosing instead to invent his own justifications for violence. Meanwhile, many others channel their urges into violent media or recreational gun use, awaiting legitimization from systems of authority. Yet the majority of white men inclined toward mass violence do not engage in overt acts of killing, like shootings; rather, they perpetrate mass violence through acts of omission—actively participating in or passively acquiescing to systems of organized abandonment that lead to mass deaths.
To enact the third step in the treatment of trauma—recognizing how one’s trauma has been produced by processes of traumatization that serve prevailing power formations—we must also acknowledge the ways in which ancestral traumas shape our present. These are not merely personal afflictions; they are collective, intergenerational wounds, transmitted and reified across time to perpetuate domination and oppression. Healing these traumas requires us not only to address the systems that inflict fresh injuries but also to reckon with the unresolved legacies of harm that condition our relationships, our actions, and our understanding of ourselves. Only by confronting these intergenerational traumas can we hope to dismantle the power formations that feed on their perpetuation.
V.
Many of the examples in these reflections on trauma address how human beings are traumatized into denying care to other human beings and to themselves as human beings. What troubles me most, however, are the ways in which humans are traumatized into denying care to non-human others and to what they perceive as the non-human parts of themselves. There can be no countering the planetary ecocide that defines our time without confronting the refusal of care that underpins it—a refusal rooted in traumas that lead humans to treat non-human others with indifference or abuse.
Of course, the traumas that inhibit humans from caring for one another are deeply entangled with those that inhibit humans from caring for non-humans. This interconnection becomes clear when we consider how humans who have been traumatized against caring for others often rationalize their inhibitions by dehumanizing those others. In much of the Western(ized) world, legal systems reflect this logic: rights and privileges are extended to non-human others when they are sufficiently “humanized” and denied to humans when they are sufficiently “dehumanized.” This principle is more than a legal convenience—it is a symptom of how traumatic experiences have warped Western(ized) sensibilities, fostering indifference and abuse toward both dehumanized humans and non-human others.
I often find myself asking: Why must Western(ized) anthropologists speak of “primitive” peoples living in “small foraging bands” when the peoples they reference clearly live as part of immense, complex societies that encompass multitudes of sentient non-human others?
These reflections on trauma have brought me closer to an answer. Western(ized) anthropologists refuse to respect the claims of so-called “primitive” peoples who view their societies as interwoven with non-human others because these anthropologists are rationalizing their own apprehensions—apprehensions rooted in traumas that have taught them to be indifferent or hostile to dehumanized and non-human others.
But this raises further questions: What are the processes of traumatization that have conditioned Western(ized) peoples to deny care to dehumanized and non-human others? To what extent do these processes rely on the infliction of fresh traumas, and to what extent do they perpetuate ancestral traumas, passed from generation to generation? How do these processes sustain and advance the power formations that stratify the Western(ized) world, that deathly world over which imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy holds dominion?
These questions point to the ways in which trauma operates as a mechanism of domination. Processes of traumatization do more than produce individualized suffering; they condition entire populations to accept and reproduce hierarchical systems that stratify human and non-human life. To deny care to non-human others is not simply an ethical failing—it is a symptom of deep historical and systemic wounds. Healing these wounds requires more than individual introspection; it demands that we confront the structures of power that perpetuate intergenerational traumas, dehumanization, and ecocide. Only by addressing these entangled legacies can we begin to reclaim the capacity to care—for ourselves, for one another, and for the more-than-human world upon which all life depends.
