Decolonizing Trauma and the Ethics of Anxious Witnessing

Abstract

Psychoanalytically informed research on political violence has shown time and again that political violence involves social and cultural processes of othering and libidinal dynamics of desire and enjoyment, usually associated with processes of ‘feminization’ of those excluded others. This complex nature of political violence begs rethinking of the conceptual and political challenges that post-conflict societies face in their transitions to democracy. For what have been mobilized in the violent events are not only ‘the strategic interests’ of determinate social groups in their struggle for power, but also a whole array of symbolic displacements (that justify exclusion according to dynamics of desire and aggressive jealousy) and, more disturbingly, the ‘acting out’ of those fantasy scenarios and the enjoyment of the suffering of the other. This complex situation disqualifies traditional actor-centred approaches which delineate a clear-cut dichotomy between victims and perpetrators, leaving bystanders — or civil society in general — out of the picture and bearing no responsibility whatsoever.