Trauma won’t save us

The idea of trauma, both as a concept and a basis for discourse, is situated within the social and historical milieu of colonialism and imperialism. The past and present of trauma are shaped in the nexus of these systems of exploitation and domination—within them, in response to them, and with hopes of rectifying their horrific consequences. However, as a paradigm, trauma is woefully inadequate for the purpose of combating the injustices perpetrated by these systems, and oftentimes facilitates their continued propagation.

The aim here is not to cast doubt on the reality of trauma as a psychological condition, nor to contest its value as a paradigm in other contexts. The question is not if or how trauma exists, but what trauma—as a concept and as a discourse—does in the context of global imperial-colonial hegemony. How does trauma function? How is it deployed, by whom, and to what ends? Who gains from it? Who loses?

Within the context of colonial and imperial domination, trauma is wielded for three unjust purposes: to draw false equivalences between the societal and ethical standings of the oppressors and the oppressed; to stifle dissent and manufacture consent for militarism; and to reconstitute the oppressed as passive victims in need of care, as opposed to as active subjects striving for liberation. Through these mechanisms, the hegemonic global powers and their allies channel trauma into militarism, war, and even genocide.

Trauma as anti-politics; trauma as great equalizer

Trauma discourse operates as a legitimizing force for suffering, but in a distinct, and potentially dangerous, manner: by invariably characterizing the traumatized as victims. This characterization extends to both perpetrators of violent injustice and whose lives are destroyed by the same violent injustice.

The anti-political discourse of trauma makes out an American soldier responsible for a massacre as a victim akin to, for example, somebody who has suffered sexual assault. As in this case, trauma discourse tends to erroneously insinuate a sort of equivalence between oppressors and oppressed, dominators and dominated. In this process, trauma discourse sheds questions of empire and colonization of the heavy burdens of ethics and politics.

Historian of science Danielle Carr argues that trauma discourse tends to obfuscate, “the social relations of labor and domination,” responsible for trauma as a psychological condition. This constitutive obscuration of history, ethics, and politics creates conditions, “whereby the trauma of an Israeli Defense Forces soldier or an American soldier who participates in a massacre is seen as the same kind of thing as the trauma of a chronically abused child in the foster care system,” (Carr, 2023).

Trauma reporting out of Palestine, especially that of humanitarian aid organizations, is frequently shot through with such false equivalencies. For instance, the humanitarian medical organization Medecins du monde adheres to a protocol of “even-handedness” towards Palestinian and Israeli suffering, typically by ensuring that reports of Palestinian suffering under occupation are accompanied by discussion of Israeli suffering from Palestinian attacks (Fassin & Rechtman, 2009, p. 204).

This purported symmetry—a typical feature of reports on the situation in Palestine—belies the starkly disproportionate conditions on the ground (Finkelstein, 2018). Acknowledgement of these actual conditions—where most Israelis live comfortably while Palestinian lives are ceaselessly torn apart by occupation and apartheid—is made impossible by the ideology of equivalence-through-trauma.

The false equivalencies perpetuated by trauma discourse, as elucidated, demonstrate a conspicuous disregard for questions of power, of morality, of history, and even simple proportionality. Instead, these equivalencies function to insist on the equivalence of victims as victims, who are supposed as neither-good-nor-bad.

In this context, the universalized truth of trauma neutralizes any possibility for concrete engagement with the material conditions underpinning domination and subordination, while at the same time aiding and abetting the actions of the oppressors.

Humanization and deference, but only for the oppressor

In her work Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post 9/11 America, Nadia Abu El-Haj outlines a dangerous tendency within trauma discourse: to obliterate the lifeworlds of those subjected to imperial dominance. During the War on Terror, for example, “Iraqis or Afghans appear only as backdrops, not subjects articulating their own perspectives on and experiences of war. Frequently enough, when they do appear, it is as the cause of the trauma the American soldier suffers,” (Abu El-Haj, 2022, p. 11).

Implicit within the nationalist premise of prioritizing the victimhood of the American soldier is the dehumanization of the dominated “other” as mere backdrop (a kind of object). This characterization supposes the “other” as a kind of being whose psychic life the beneficiaries of empire need not be concerned with—that is, if the other is supposed to possess a meaningful psychic life in the first place.

More militarized strands of trauma discourse extend to depicting the “enemies” of global empire, especially the United States, as inherently non-traumatizable & prone to extraordinary violence. According to this narrative, the acts that would traumatize, say, an American soldier, align with the kind of being the “enemies” are by their very nature. Therefore, the “enemies” cannot experience the psychological rift (between self and action) required for traumatization by one's own violent acts. In the imperial imaginary, the “enemies” are always perpetrators, never victims.

Conversely, the imperial figure of the American soldier profoundly suffers the mental consequences of what “had to be done” at war to ensure the victory of American “liberty” and “freedom.” The moral valences and material reality of what was done—indeed, even the brute fact that the soldier did what was done—are squarely set aside.

Later in Combat Trauma, Abu El-Haj describes how trauma discourse demands deference to the understanding of war and conflict held by soldiers, especially veterans. Abu El-Haj refers to the soldier’s position in the imperial imaginary as that of the “trauma-hero,” (Abu El Haj, 2022, p. 42) constituted by the bravely and willingly accumulated scars of war.

The American citizen, so the story goes, simply lacks the experience necessary to understand the harsh realities of warfare. The unique and irreducible experience of the veteran on the battlefield preempts any outside critique; having been to war guarantees moral and epistemic superiority.

The American soldier’s trauma erases culpability for any crimes and demands unquestioning deference on all fronts. Criticism of even the most egregious actions of the American military is stifled under the banner of “support the troops.” In this context, trauma discourse fortifies jingoistic sentiments while conveniently overlooking the reality articulated by Olufemi O. Taiwo that “trauma can corrupt as readily as it can ennoble” (Taiwo, 2022, p. 120).

From justice to compassion; from resistance to victimization

What of the trauma suffered by the dominated, by the oppressed? Within this context, trauma provides a discursive basis to make sense of the psychic scars accumulated under conditions of domination, and plays a sometimes pivotal role in humanizing those “othered” by the imperial core and its allies. Trauma also is key in organizing and conceptualizing effective treatment and management of the aforementioned psychic scars.

Dr. Yasser Abu Yamei, who has dedicated years of his life to treating Palestinians in the Gaza Strip affected by the traumas resulting from Israel’s vicious 2014 offensive, further emphasizes the efficacy of trauma-focused therapeutic techniques in fostering resilience, social cohesion, and the restoration of a sense of safety and security amid relentless brutalization and humiliation (Dawson & Azzum, 2016).

Trauma, however, cannot save the so-called wretched of the earth, risking a displacement of a logic of struggle in favor of a logic of care. According to anthropologist Didier Fassin, this risk has long since been realized: “Where previously the language evoked in defending oppressed people was that of revolution, current usage favors the vocabulary of psychology to sensitize the world to their misfortune. Yesterday we denounced imperialist domination; today we reveal its psychic traces” (Fassin, 2023, p. 532).

The constitution of the oppressed as traumatized subjects often relies on a pernicious “either-or” logic, portraying them as either traumatized victims in need of care or as active combatants on the field. This either-or logic is frequently taken as a dichotomy between the figure of the perennially innocent civilian and that of the guilty fighter/militant/terrorist, especially in the official discourses of the imperialist powers.

Recently, for example, the Biden administration has gone to great lengths to distinguish the innocent Palestinians of Gaza against the so-called “Hamas terrorists.” The administration’s official line goes something like this: we are greatly concerned for the innocent Palestinians caught up in this inevitable, unstoppable tragedy (State Department, 2024; Kanno-Youngs, 2024), but we also believe violent revenge for the events of October 7th to be basically legitimate (The White House, 2023; Quds News Network, 2024).

In other words, the Biden administration follows a loose policy of expressing empty concern for the plight of the Palestinians while toeing the genocidal Israeli line in action. The basic premise of Israel’s assault is framed as retribution for the collective trauma resulting from the October 7th Palestinian Resistance attack, which itself links back to the originary trauma of the Holocaust (Bartov et al., 2023). Anybody even remotely, possibly linked to October 7th is guilty, and therefore a legitimate target. This is the process by which the imperialists and colonizers, following Gabriel Winant, gobble up trauma, “feeding on bodies and tears and turning them into bombs,” (Winant, 2023).

“Be comforted. / Let's make us med'cines of our great revenge / To cure this deadly grief" (Macbeth, 4.3)

On the ground, the distinction between “innocent Palestinian” and “Hamas terrorist” is not so absolute. Not for the Biden administration, which has continued providing robust financial and military support to Israel, with which Israel indiscriminately mass-murders Palestinian men, women, and children. Not so for humanitarian organizations, who have long understood that many Palestinians are involved with Hamas but not in any way shape or form connected with “terrorist activity.” Not so for the Palestinians of Gaza themselves, for most of whom “Hamas is an integral part of their century-long national struggle for liberation and self-determination” (Hroub, 2023, p. 204), and many of whom serve (or have served) civil roles in Hamas’s government.

Nevertheless, the victim-perpetrator / innocent-guilty dichotomies are so ingrained in trauma discourse that few manage to avoid falling prey to it—even the few who acknowledge that individuals classified as guilty fighters/militants/terrorists can also be traumatized victims.  As Dider Fassin notes, even those few tend to intervene solely in the form of care and bearing witness to suffering, rather than by contributing to and helping to legitimate direct resistance (including violent resistance) against imperial and colonial domination.

These interventions inadvertently reinforce the dichotomy they seemingly seek to dismantle by splitting singular subjects into two, diametrically opposed sides, and further reproduce the discursive and conceptual milieu wherein trauma replaces the “politics of justice” with the “politics of compassion” (Fassin, 2023, p. 543).

Notice the disparity between trauma discourse’s treatment of resistance fighters compared to those of the imperial core? American soldiers are constituted as victims in a manner that facilitates further imperial aggression—similarly to the trauma suffered by the post-9/11 American public and the Israeli public right now, the trauma of American soldiers is “transmuted into violence” (Winant, 2023). They are, according to the hegemonic narrative, victims of their own actions, which are necessary to uphold peace and order across the globe. Their trauma is a worthy sacrifice, by which they are always already exonerated.

In contrast, enemy combatants, even if thought of as victims, remain supposed as guilty for the (inherently illegitimate) acts of violence they perform. The exonerative function of trauma is suddenly and conspicuously absent. The American soldier’s trauma demands we look past its often unjust, violent origins. The “enemy,” even when allowed to be a subject of trauma, does not benefit from any such dubious acts of grace. Absolution for me, not for thee.

Conclusion

The trauma paradigm, even within the context of imperialism and colonialism, has just applications—as previously discussed in the case of mental health treatment in Gaza. This is also true within the imperial core, where just reconstructions of trauma are imaginable.

For upholders of global empire (such as American soldiers), a conceptualization of trauma divorced from a victimhood-centric paradigm could facilitate more intimate recognition of the wrongs inherent in participation in violent imperialism. This recognition could, in turn, pave the way for political work against the recurrence of those wrongs, coupled with reparative efforts aimed at making up for the lives destroyed by those wrongs.

However, effecting this sort of paradigm shift necessitates (re-)inserting and centering an ethico-political dimension into how we think and use trauma, drastically transforming trauma as a concept and a discourse. For now, trauma, conceptually and discursively, remains a source of injustice directed against those on the underside of empire and colonization, and must be recognized as a wildly inadequate framework for the pursuit of justice.

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Abu El-Haj, N. (2022). Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. Verso.

Bartov, O., Browing, C.R., Caplan, J., Dwork, D. Rothberg, M., et al (2023, November 20). An Open Letter on the Misuse of Holocaust Memory. The New York Review.

Carr, Danielle (2023, December 15). Psychiatry Won’t Solve Our Mental Health Crisis—Only Politics Can Do That. Jacobin. https://jacobin.com/2023/12/psychiatry-history-trauma-politics-medicine-mental-health

Dawson, B. & Azzam, Z. (2016). Interview with Dr. Yasser Abu Jamei: The Gaza Community Mental Health Programme. Journal of Palestine Studies, 45(2), 120-126.

Fassin, D. (2023). The Humanitarian Politics of Testimony: Subjectification through Trauma in the Israel-Palestinian Conflict. Cultural Anthropology, 23(3), 531-538.

Fassin, D. & Rechtman, R (2009) The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Princeton University Press.

Finkelstein, N. (2018). Gaza: An Inquest into its Martydrom. University of California Press.

Hroub, K. (2023). Hamas and a century of resistance. In S. Englert, M. Schatz, & R. Warren (Eds.), From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine. Verso. Haymarket Books.

Kanno-Youngs, Z. (2024, February 7). Blinken meets with the Saudi crown prince, hoping to rally support to end the war in Gaza. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/05/world/us-strikes-israel-hamas-news/blinken-arrives-in-saudi-arabia-hoping-to-rally-support-for-a-peace-framework-for-gaza?smid=url-share

Quds News Network [@QudsNen]. (2024, January 31). When Asked about Biden's message to Arab Aericans ahead of his visit to Michigan on Thursday, the spokesperson for the White House says "Israel has the right to defend itself." [Video attached] [Post]. Twitter/X. https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1752817362087112935

Shatan, Chaim F. (1989). Happiness is a Warm Gun: Militarized Mourning and Ceremonial Vengeance. Vietnam Generation 3, 127-151.

State Department [@StateDept]. (2024, February 2). Nearly two million people have been displaced from their homes in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands are experiencing acute hunger. And the daily toll that Israel’s military operations take on innocent civilians remains too high. We must address the ongoing suffering. —@SecBlinken [Video attached] [Post]. Twitter/X. https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1755391206538739715

Taiwo, Olufemi O. (2022). Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else). Pluto Press.

The White House (2023, October 18). Remarks by President Biden on the October 7th Terrorist Attacks and the Resilience of the State of Israel and its People | Tel Aviv, Israel [Press release]. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/10/18/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-october-7th-terrorist-attacks-and-the-resilience-of-the-state-of-israel-and-its-people-tel-aviv-israel/

Winant, G. (2023, October 13). On Mourning and Statehood: A Response to Joshua Leifer. Dissent. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/a-response-to-joshua-leifer/