Entanglements of Trauma: Relationality and Toni Morrison's Home

Abstract

Postcolonial trauma studies have from the start enabled the inclusion of interdisciplinary research, but postcolonial literary critics have long hesitated to develop innovative approaches to trauma theory. Now, however, interdisciplinary, comparative, and relational approaches to trauma are explored to accommodate broader ethical and political registers of trauma research for postcolonial studies. This relational, non-oppositional approach is what this article explores and demonstrates in an analysis of Toni Morrison’s novel Home (2012). It argues that Morrison addresses, absorbs and transforms pre-existing discourses on trauma and race, contributing to conceptualizations of modes of healing and redress not currently privileged in cultural trauma theory.