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 I find that it is neither inexplicable nor inevitable. As I see it, all of the various rationales being deployed to explain and to justify people’s inability to care about so many ongoing genocides, ethnocides, and ecocides are themselves, in fact, the symptoms of anxieties that stem from various sorts of traumas.
In a book titled Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, Freud proposed that our egos produce anxiety in us in order to keep us from spontaneously acting in ways that our egos anticipate will cause us harm. Our egos do this by calling to mind images of past experiences that (dis)simulate anticipated harms before they actually take place. Sometimes the images that our egos call to mind evoke traumatic events from our past. When traumas are evoked, our super-egos enter the mix and censor the images recalled, repressing and distorting these images before they fully come to mind. The effective result is this: on the one hand, our egos recall images that provoke feelings of anxiety in us and keep us from acting spontaneously; on the other hand, our super-egos repress and distort what is recalled so that we cannot properly make sense of what we are anxious about. Unable to make sense of what we are anxious about, we proceed to rationalize our inability to act spontaneously—that is to say, in other words, that we come up with abstract reasons to explain why we shouldn’t act spontaneously.
The person who has been traumatized is often, but not always, a person who is unable to spontaneously act in caring ways because they have come to anticipate that caring will cause them harm. Whenever the traumatized person feels the urge to care for themselves or to care for others, their egos call to mind images of experiences that have taught them to associate caring for themselves or others with harm but, at the same time, their super-egos repress and distort the images called to mind. The effective result is this: the traumatized person is apprehensive about spontaneously caring, but they cannot make sense of what has made them apprehensive about caring. In lieu of making sense of their inability to spontaneously care, the traumatized person will come up with abstract reasons to explain why they shouldn’t spontaneously care.
Anyone and everyone who uses abstract reasoning to justify denying themselves or others care is a traumatized person engaged in rationalizing their apprehensions. Freudian psychoanalysis teaches us that the only sensible justifications for denying care to oneself or to another are to be found in one’s concrete experiences, and not in one’s abstract reasoning. Thus, it is imperative (i) that we dismiss the abstract reasoning that we use to justify our inability to care and (ii) that we uncover the concrete experiences that we are simultaneously recollecting and repressing whenever we have inhibitions about caring.
My point here is this: the way to get peoples to affirm ideological or mythical reasons for denying care to themselves and others is to (i) traumatize peoples in some way shape or form, (ii) allow their traumas to fester unresolved for an extended duration, and then (iii) play upon their traumas. All genocidal, ethnocidal, and ecocidal power formations work by exposing differing social elements to different types of traumas in order to prevent these differing elements from properly caring for one another and from mixing and mingling together — this is what makes it possible for one social element to endeavor to dominate and eliminate others for ideological or mythical reasons.
Imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the power formation driving global apartheid and planetary ecocide, works to stratify societies by race, by sex, and by economic class, and it does so by exposing individuals of differing races, sexes, and economic classes to different traumas — all so that (i) these differing sorts of individuals are no longer able to properly defer to and care for one another and (ii) these differing sorts of individuals will affirm racist, sexist, and classist ideologies and myths that rationalize their inability to properly care for one another. Speak to anyone who is indifferent to, or actively engaged in, the maintenance and advancement of global apartheid and planetary ecocide, and you will sooner or later find them ascribing to racist, sexist, and classist ideologies and myths. Proceed to put them on the couch and under analysis and you will, time and time again, discover that the ideologies and myths they ascribe to are symptoms of their traumas.
II.
The Freudian two-step for treating traumas runs as follows: (i) get the traumatized individual to recognize that their rationalizations for not caring for themselves and others are covering up traumas, then (ii) get the traumatized individual to become aware of the traumas that they are simultaneously recollecting and repressing whenever they have inhibitions about caring for themselves and others. This Freudian two-step is a good start, but it doesn’t go far enough. Following in the footsteps of Frantz Fanon, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and others, we need take matters one step further: we need the traumatized individual to recognize whether it is and how it is that their trauma was produced by a process of traumatization that serves a prevailing power formation. That is to say that the traumatized individual has to discover whether or not they have been traumatized in order to maintain social stratification, in order to ensure that individuals belonging to differing social groups refrain from mixing and mingling together, and do not spontaneously care for one another. The third step in the treatment of trauma that I am advocating points to the fact that, unless the power formations that stratify societies are countered and their attendant processes of traumatization are terminated, the individual who resolves a given trauma will, sooner or later, be re-traumatized as a result of the workings of power formations that stratify societies.
Let us take, for example, the proliferation of white male mass shooters in the United Settler States, which points to the specific manner in which certain kinds of white males are exposed to certain kinds of traumas that prevent them from caring for the lives of others. If we mean to solve this problem, we cannot trust those who do nothing more than critique the ideologies and myths that white male mass shooters ascribe to. Nor can we trust those who ask us to do nothing more than empathize with individual white male mass shooters and to consider their traumas. Those we can trust are those who go deep, and situate the traumas endured by white male mass shooters within the context of a society dominated by white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal power formations. What we need to do above all else is expose the fact that the white male mass shooter’s traumas are the product of white supremacist and patriarchal power formations that aim to encourage him to dominate and eliminate others instead of care for others. Ay, we need to expose the fact that others, Black and indigenous peoples in particular, are being traumatized concomitantly, by related power formations, in order to keep them from caring for themselves and to make them accept being dominated and eliminated by white men. What’s more, we need to recognize that there is no dealing with the traumas of the oppressor without dealing with the traumas of the oppressed: there is no treating the traumas of the potential white male mass shooter without also treating the traumas of those whom he is most likely to target, for these traumas are conditioned by deeply interlocked concatenations of power formations.
III.
My thinking on the matter of trauma assumes that caring for ourselves and others is our default setting. That being said, I find that none of us can care equally for everything everywhere all at once. At any given moment in time, each of us has to prioritize caring for some peoples, places, and things over and above others. But it is important not to confuse prioritizing this person, place, or thing over that person, place, or thing with claiming that this person, place, or thing deserves care while that person, place, or thing deserves indifference or abuse. “Over and above” is not synonymous with “over and against.”
Self-care is about attending to the ever evolving limits of one’s ability to care for others and learning how to prioritize who or what to care for within one’s limits at any given moment in time, so as to avoid burning out. The choice of what to prioritize is rarely a rational choice, but a matter of being more or less affectively enchanted by peoples, places, and things, and lured to care for them. The abstract reasons that you cite in order to explain and justify your priorities are only ever symptoms of the degree to which you find some people, places, and things more enchanting and alluring than others.
Processes of traumatization work to shape our affects so as to make us become utterly enchanted or utterly disenchanted by certain kinds of persons, places, things — the effective result being that certain persons, places, things acquire an extreme allure while others lose their allure almost entirely. To say that X doesn’t deserve any care but, instead, deserves indifference or abuse is to have been traumatized against caring for X. Concomitantly, to say in that X “is the only thing in the world worth caring for” is to have been traumatized in such a way that one cares for “X” to an extreme degree — the term for this sort of extreme caring-for being a “trauma bond.” Those who care for certain people, places, or things to such an extreme degree that they succumb to burnout are likely to have been trauma-bonded to that for which they show extreme care and, at the same time, traumatized so as to become indifferent or abusive to themselves.
People who have overcome traumas are much more sensible about caring. They will say, “Given that I can only care so much at any given time, and given that X is presently the most enchanting and alluring person, place, or thing to me now, I am presently prioritizing X. But this doesn’t mean that X is the only thing that I care for right now. I presently care more for X and less for everything else besides, yes, but I still do care for everything else besides to varying lesser degrees. Some things will matter more to me at any given time, but everything matters to me. Priority is not a synonym for exclusivity.”
What’s more, people who have overcome traumas are open and honest about their priorities being determined by their sensibilities. When asked why they have prioritized this person, place, or thing over others, people who have overcome traumas will remark upon their sensibilities and the formative experiences that have shaped their sensibilities, including traumatic experiences. They will neither claim to be making rational calculations nor claim to be upholding moral principles. Going further, people who have overcome traumas will situate their many formative experiences in their differing social contexts, attending to the power formations prevailing over differing social contexts. “Let me share with you the experiences that have led me to prioritize X and put these experiences in context for you.”
IV.
To use my self as an example, my personal apprehensions and anxieties around meritocratic distinctions can be traced back to the trauma of being routinely beaten as a child for having failed to behave and achieve in a manner that would mark me as a Black person of distinction, not just another Black person in Amerikkka. To situate my trauma in its proper social context, I must attend to the power formations that work to traumatize Black children so that they will grow into adults who have difficulty caring for themselves, who feel that their failure to live up to “superior” standards of “achievement” set by rich white men is a mark against them that justifies their being subject to injury and death as unintended consequence of routine disciplinary action, as normalized accident, and as collateral damage of society’s pursuit of progressive optimization.
Going further and digging deeper, however, I must recognize my trauma is not simply my own: it is an ancestral trauma. Colonialism brought new deprivations and new logics of corporal punishment to Africa, and my father, his father, and his father’s father were all traumatized into accepting the fact that any Black person lacking in distinction, who did not submit to administration and supervision by the colonizer, was liable to be killed by the workings of the colonial administration, sometimes by its malice (i.e., murder by commission) but more often by its neglect (i.e., murder by omission). My father was an acute victim of this ancestral trauma for having been born during the post-WWII famines and shortages in Tanzania, and he transmitted his own ancestral traumas to me by beating them into my flesh. I know from others, however, that his physical abuse was not really necessary to transmit such a trauma to me: emotional abuse and emotional unavailability can transmit ancestral traumas from generation to generation even more effectively, thanks to their greater subtleties.
This is the rub. Imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, having been around for more than five centuries now, no longer needs to directly inflict fresh traumas upon the flesh of its victims in order to oppress and dominate its victims. Instead, imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy can indirectly traumatize its victims by facilitating the transmission of ancestral traumas from generation to generation in subtle waves. Of course, imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy has never ceased to inflict fresh traumas upon its victims, but it has, for a long time, relied heavily upon the perpetuation of ancestral traumas in order to perpetuate itself. As I have already noted, one of the primary means by which imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy sickens and kills people today is by facilitating the transmission of chronic stresses and psychological traumas transgenerationally while, at the same time, making it increasingly difficult for peoples to heal transgenerational stresses and traumas by communing with their dead ancestors.
Returning to the problem of the white male mass shooter, the traumas that encourage him to dominate and exterminate others are, no doubt, ancestral traumas that have encouraged generations of men before him to actively participate in or passively acquiesce to white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal projects of genocide, ethnocide, and ecocide. There is no solving the problem of the white male mass shooter without healing his ancestral traumas, his “White Man’s Burden.” Gun control measures may lessen the symptoms of his ancestral traumas, but gun control measures will never heal them. When guns are unavailable, traumatized white males will seek alternative means to commit acts of extreme violence as long as their ancestral traumas render them incapable of caring for others, and as long as their potential victims are suffering from ancestral traumas that encourage them to accept being dominated and exploited.
Indeed, with this in mind, we need to recognize that a sizable number of white men are only waiting for a “legitimate” reason to perpetrate or participate in mass murder. The white male mass shooter is but one who ceases to wait to be given a “legitimate” reason by authorities, and acts to legitimate his own reason. Most white men with an inclination to mass murder can, and are, waiting for authorities to provide them with a reason to act, satisfying their murderous urges in the interim playing shoot’em up games, watching shoot ‘em up films, and firing guns at shooting ranges. No matter whether they are waiting to be given reasons or making their own reasons, a sizable number of white Amerikkkaner men are suffering from a trans-generation repetition compulsion that is driving them to reenact the cruelties of their genocidal ancestors. Ay, and we need to recognize that most white Amerikkkaner men who are inclined towards mass murder by their ancestral traumas are not engaging in acts of mass murder by commission, like mass shootings, but, instead, are engaging in acts of mass murder by omission, by either actively participating in or passively acquiescing to projects of organized abandonment that result in mass deaths.
We need to recognize that enacting the third step in the treatment of trauma — recognizing the extent to which one’s trauma has been produced by a process of traumatization that serves a prevailing power formation — must involve recognizing the extent to which what appears to be one’s own trauma is, in fact, an ancestral trauma that has been transmitted down through the generations.
V.
Most of the examples cited in these running thoughts on trauma could be said to deal with human beings who have been traumatized into denying care to other human beings and denying care to themselves as human beings. What concerns me most, however, are the ways in which human beings are traumatized into denying care to non-human others and denying care to what they view to be the non-human parts of themselves. I believe that there is no way to counter the planetary ecocide that defines our time without recognizing that this ecocide is being perpetrated and perpetuated by human beings who refuse to care for non-human others, and who treat non-human others with indifference or abuse.
Of course, the traumas that prevent humans from caring for one another cannot be disentangled from those that prevent humans from caring for non-humans. This becomes obvious to anyone who considers the fact that humans who have been traumatized against caring for other humans often rationalize their inhibitions by claiming that other humans are “less human” than they are. Indeed, it is a legal principle in much of the Western(ized) world that the less human you are, the less care you deserve — rights and privileges are given to non-human others when they are sufficiently “humanized” and, vice versa, rights and privileges are denied to humans when they are sufficiently “dehumanized.” But this legal principle is but a symptom of so many traumatic experiences that have warped Western(ized) people’s sensibilities in such a way that they have become indifferent and abusive towards dehumanized and non-human others.
I often ask myself the following question. “Why must Western(ized) anthropologists speak of ‘primitive’ peoples living in ‘small foraging bands’ when the peoples they are referring to can and do live as if they are part of immense and complex societies that involve great multitudes of sentient non-human others?”
These running thoughts on trauma have led me to an answer to this question. As I see it now, Western(ized) anthropologists refuse to respect “primitive” peoples’ claims to live in societies that include multitudes of non-human others because these anthropologists are rationalizing traumas that have made them apprehensive about caring for dehumanized and non-human others.
But what are the processes of traumatization that have traumatized Western(ized) peoples against caring for dehumanized and non-human others? To what degree are these processes of traumatization currently inflicting fresh traumas upon their victims and to what degree are they facilitating the transmission of ancestral traumas from generation to generation? And how precisely do these processes of traumatization contribute to power formations that maintain and advance social stratification within the Western(ized) world, within that deathly world of suffering over which imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy prevails?
