Overview

Colonial Trauma is a path-breaking account of the psychosocial effects of colonial domination. Following the work of Frantz Fanon, Lazali draws on historical materials as well as her own clinical experience as a psychoanalyst to shed new light on the ways in which the history of colonization leaves its traces on contemporary postcolonial selves. Lazali found that many of her patients experienced difficulties that can only be explained as the effects of “colonial trauma” dating from the French colonization of Algeria and the postcolonial period. Many French feel weighed down by a colonial history that they are aware of but which they have not experienced directly. Many Algerians are traumatized by the way that the French colonial state imposed new names on people and the land, thereby severing the links with community, history, and genealogy and contributing to feelings of loss, abandonment, and injustice. Only by reconstructing this history and uncovering its consequences can we understand the impact of colonization and give individuals the tools to come to terms with their past. By demonstrating the power of psychoanalysis to illuminate the subjective dimension of colonial domination, this book will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the long-term consequences of colonization and its aftermath.

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9781509541027

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Reviews

“This book adds an important layer to the psychoanalytic understanding of colonial trauma and its afterlife. Beginning with her bilingual clinical practice in France and Algeria, Lazali addresses how patients differ in their response to the technologies of a ‘whiting out’ of an erased past. She takes up the mantle of Fanon to study intergenerational trauma and how it manifests itself in her patients, in Francophone literary texts, in the bellicose and violent struggles around religion, language, and politics, in concepts of the social, and in the relationship between individuated subjects and the group.” Ranjana Khanna, Professor of Literature at Duke University “With Colonial Trauma, there is no going back to how we thought about colonialism before, just as it is now unclear how we go forward from here—theoretically, clinically, or politically.” European Journal of Psychoanalysis

Colonial Trauma adds an important layer to the psychoanalytic understanding of colonial trauma and its afterlife. Beginning with her bilingual clinical practice in France and Algeria, Lazali addresses how patients in these two environments differ in their response to the technologies of a whiting out of an erased past. Frantz Fanon, psychiatrist and anti-colonial activist, grappled with the many layers of influence shaping individuated forms of mental health manifested in colonial violence, in cultural and religious forms, and in the possibility of a constitution of a national culture. Lazali takes up the mantle of Fanon to study intergenerational trauma and how it manifests itself in her patients, in francophone literary texts, in the bellicose and violent struggles around religion, language, and politics, in concepts of the social, and in the relationship between individuated subjects and the group. Ranjana Khanna, Professor of Literature at Duke University

“This book adds an important layer to the psychoanalytic understanding of colonial trauma and its afterlife. Beginning with her bilingual clinical practice in France and Algeria, Lazali addresses how patients differ in their response to the technologies of a ‘whiting out’ of an erased past. She takes up the mantle of Fanon to study intergenerational trauma and how it manifests itself in her patients, in Francophone literary texts, in the bellicose and violent struggles around religion, language, and politics, in concepts of the social, and in the relationship between individuated subjects and the group.” Ranjana Khanna, Professor of Literature at Duke University

Author Information

Karima Lazali is a practising psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist

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