Cosmological Trauma and Postcolonial Modernity

A postcolonial approach to trauma studies must begin by apprehending the cosmological damage wreaked by colonial modernity, which implicates not only humans, but entire systems of relations amidst the cosmos. Cosmological trauma thus emerges as the key term for a properly postcolonial trauma studies in so far as it extends the very principle of extension at the heart of Caruthian trauma theory. The anti–identitarian insights about the nature of subjectivity that shaped the foundational texts of both postcolonial theory and trauma theory have renewed importance. Cosmological trauma thus emerges as the key term for a properly postcolonial trauma studies in so far as it extends the very principle of extension at the heart of Caruthian trauma theory. S. Freud spent his final months attempting to uncover the origin of Judaism. This project was his psychoanalytic response both to the anti-Semitism at the heart of the Third Reich’s mass psychology and to his own diasporic displacement from Vienna to London.