The Politics of Trauma and Peace-Building

Lessons from Northern Ireland

Cillian McGrattan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317351825
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Gouvernement américain

In marked contrast to literary, historical and cultural studies, there has been a limited engagement with the concepts and politics of trauma by political science and peacebuilding research.

This book explores the debate on trauma and peacebuilding and presents the challenges for democratization that the politics of trauma present in transitional periods. It demonstrates how ideas about reconciliation are filtered through ideological lenses and become new ways of articulating communal and ethno-nationalist sentiments. Drawing on the work of Jacques Rancière and Iris Marion Young and with specific reference to the Northern Irish transition, it argues for a shift in focus from the representation of trauma towards its reception and calls for a more substantive approach to the study of democracy and post-conflict peacebuilding.

This text will be of interest to scholars and students of peace and conflict studies, ethnic and nationalism studies, transitional justice studies, gender studies, Irish politics, nationalism and ethnicity.

1 The politics of trauma

The politics of trauma are central to ideas about democracy and – by extrapolation – to processes of peace-building and democratization in post-conflict societies.¹ Trauma recurs in such societies in various ways, but always involves concerns over loss, grievance, culpability and complicity in the hurts and injustices caused by terror and political violence in the past. I wish to suggest that to speak of the politics of trauma does not mean to devalue the unfathomability and sense of powerlessness that constitutes the legacy of terror upon individuals; instead, I argue that a framing that emphasizes inarticulacy at the expense of working through and beyond violence works to leave victims as marginal, peripheral and without voice. The legacy of hurt and inarticulacy that is produced by the sudden imposition of violence cannot easily be done away with, but I argue that unless responses to that imposition form part of the politics of peace-building, then societies transitioning away from conflict risk basing their new dispensation on the exclusion of the most vulnerable.

What, then, do the politics of trauma look like? More specifically, what do they look like in the context of a peace-building situation or a society transitioning from violence to a democratic settlement process? The aim of this chapter is to begin to sketch an outline of an answer to those questions based on the notion that, in the first instance, the political dimensions of trauma involve a response. In other words, how do we begin to respond to trauma at a political level? I suggest that that framing involves something more than the exuberant aestheticized representations that constitute one form of analysis of engagement with trauma. More specifically, as I go on to point out, it also involves looking beyond platitudinous efforts to try to invest peace-building and, in particular, transitional justice, with rounder, more empathetic edges; to that end, I point out that although the effort may result in a broadening of the discipline, in practical and social terms, it indulges the conceit of pity.

I suggest that the political response may be distinguished from, for example, those approaches and the psychoanalytic treatment of individual trauma cases in that it addresses and positions itself directly in front of questions of power, agency, society and perspective. By this, I mean to shift focus, or, more precisely, to broaden the viewpoint, to incorporate issues to do with knowing about trauma (something that is, by nature, a pain that is private, recurring and silencing). In other words, the focus of this chapter (and the rest of the book) is not simply the question regarding how we know what we are talking about when the subject is intrinsically linked to inarticulacy. It also speaks to what follows from that question – for in asking it, we already imply an answer and a response. Thus, the second question relates to how can we incorporate that ambiguity of knowledge into our response? To what extent does that haziness forestall attempts to respond? The chapter describes how the politics of trauma initially involve recognition of those fissures and the consideration of ways of dealing and coping with them. In so doing, the politics of trauma essentially circle around questions of meaning and reception.

This exploration provides the basis for later discussions concerning how post-conflict societies understand themselves as societies or as political communities, and it aims to clear the ground on which to address understandings and representations of social and societal responsibility for the victims of historic violence. The discussion of the politics of trauma, then, involves the tackling of inarticulacy through the restoration of voice and agency, while working within the confines of what Gilles Deleuze described as ‘the indignity of speaking for others’, that is, the appreciation of ‘the theoretical fact that only those directly concerned can speak in a practical way on their own behalf’.²

The politics of trauma in transitional societies

The focus of what might be termed ‘mainstream’ approaches to post-conflict democratization – namely, those relating to peace-building in general and its constituent and cognate disciplines of political science and transitional justice in particular – tend to obscure or ignore the relationship between trauma and democracy. For example, the United Nation’s definition of transitional justice supports a procedural approach, defining transitional justice as ‘the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempt to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation’.³ In this view, democracy is chiefly associated with the protocols, rules and institutions that provide for checks and balances against abuses of power and for accountability and oversight of policy makers. Arguably, because of this focus, the relational aspects of democracy become downplayed – that is, the notion that exclusion and even injustice can occur not only in the absence of a system of protocols and scrutiny mechanisms, but through their very operation. Likewise, it can lead to ignoring the idea that behavioural norms and expectations exist not simply within the territory of ideas, beliefs and prejudices but are created through the very guidelines established to constrain injustice and facilitate reconciliation. Of course, the institutional and rule-based aspects of democracy are of vital importance and play a determining role in shaping the outcomes of, for example, elections or other forms of political contestation. But a framing that focuses on those aspects, I suggest, tends to overshadow other important elements, in particular, the ethical or social ties that constitute the fabric of political transition. One effect of this tilt in post-conflict situations is that the political and ethical ramifications of post-conflict trauma remain under-researched and underappreciated.

I suggest that political and policy-oriented responses within post-conflict societies to dealing with contentious, violent pasts require careful (re)calibration to more fully take into account the political dimensions of trauma. This may be achieved in several practical ways, such as the enshrining of victims’ experiences at the heart of society through positive discrimination, the valorization of victims’ experiences within truth and reconciliation processes over those of perpetrators and the fencing in of historical narratives to delimit the number of permissible ‘lies’ that circulate in post-conflict societies.⁴ The chapter is concerned primarily with the ethos of responding to trauma: as such, it argues that trauma demands a response and a recognition of the imperative involved in extending societal responsibility for those individuals affected by political violence and terror.

In constructing this argument, I make two distinctions regarding the political and societal implications of trauma in post-conflict situations and divided societies. First, I deliberately sidestep questions concerning the actual practice of psychiatric work on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or intergenerational transfer of traumatic memories. Although I understand that these questions cannot be divorced from a political or the social context,⁵ the essentially epistemological and methodological issues involved in establishing what that context or set of relations involves seems to me to be analytically separate from the exploration of the trauma/peace-building relationship, which is concerned with how peace is built at a political and societal level. Second, the chapter is not immediately concerned over the debates within psychoanalysis over the changing clinical definition of trauma and PTSD.⁶ Instead, I wish to explore the politics of trauma within societies that are transitioning from conflict to peace. Standard approaches to settlement processes, or building peace and deepening democracy in such societies, focus on institutional engineering; that is, on the designing of bodies and rules to encourage, for example, power sharing among elites and/or participation in the decision-making process among various sectors of society. To return to the United Nations example: for the UN, the demilitarization, demobilization and reintegration (frequently abbreviated to DDR) of former combatants are also seen as intrinsic to building inclusive, peaceful societies.⁷ The two approaches can be exclusive and suboptimal: the focus on perpetrators of violence, for instance, may inhibit notions of inclusivity and power sharing among their victims. Put crudely, the essential choice between peace and stability now (with the focus on elite compromise and perpetrator-centred processes) and justice later, or justice and peace now (with the danger being that holding perpetrators accountable for their actions risks destabilizing the peace, or is unrealistic and remains unfulfilled). Both despite and because of these problems, I suggest that any attempt to conceive democratization processes within such societies needs to be aligned with an awareness of trauma in a political sense. I argue that this incorporates and yet goes beyond procedural definitions of democracy to include a sense of social responsibility for those who have suffered from terror and political violence.

The politics of trauma involves the imposition of powerlessness through the irruption of overwhelming violence that is both unexpected and involves a breach of trust and security.⁸ Veena Das points out that pain ‘makes a claim asking for acknowledgement’; in other words, despite its ostensible subjective and private nature, the very inarticulateness involved with trauma works as a call, an expression that demands an answer.⁹ Trauma, in a political sense, incorporates this societal imperative, but also questions the power relations involved in the perpetuation and recurrence of injury. The politics of trauma, then, involve asking what underpins the return of collective grievances in transitional societies. They examine the power asymmetries and persistent injustices (and perceived wrongs) that lie behind unresolved fissures. Since trauma involves the loss of articulateness in a political sense, it incorporates questions of democracy-as-voice and democracy-as-access. By working with and through the hurts and the forcible removals of the words that could be used to explain the injuries, the politics of trauma always also revolve around questions concerning the restoration of voice, the facilitation of access to power and decision makers and the demand for transparency in the political process. It asks fundamental questions about the relationship between political leaders and elected representatives and the citizens they serve; as such, the politics of trauma emphasizes the ability of politicians to try to rebuild broken relationships and repair fractured trust.

An immediate problem that arises in talking about the politics of trauma is that of what constitutes ‘talk’; in other words, how can we apply the empirical approach of ‘mainstream’, positivistic methodologies of social science to investigate something that, by its nature, evades assimilation and representation?¹⁰ This is because trauma is not only a recurring pain that is subjective, individual and privatized, but it also involves the loss of means to assimilate that recurrence (thereby repeating the search for meaning). In other words, it is characterized by repetition: an intermittent but ever-present living out and acting out of an injury in the past and a recurring attempt to come to terms with the legacy of pain, which can itself be hindered and frustrated by the overwhelming nature of the initial hurt. Trauma, then, involves interior haunting(s) and is seemingly defined by the removal of the means to exorcize. In other words, the damage cannot be simply worked through and healed – the damage itself recurs and frustrates the process of articulating hurt and locating pain.

Elizabeth Bennett has argued that trauma is never truly subjective – it is never completely interior or exterior – but involves relational dynamics in which the silenced strain for vocalization. Bennett’s key concern is with artistic representational engagements with trauma, which she sees as inherently political in that it works against privilege and power by drawing its audience into an awareness of pain and pain’s incommunicable nature.¹¹ In a similar way, the critical re/presentation of trauma necessitates awareness of political and ethical factors. One of the immediate and most fundamental of these factors relates to questions of manipulation, appropriation and usurpation of the pain of others. Neutrality can, in this regard, be seen perhaps as ‘patronizing’ with the resort to aestheticized renderings of trauma being tantamount to some kind of post-modern spectacle.¹² However, although trauma frustrates healing, it does not negate progress. This point is clarified by Dominick LaCapra, who argues that

… [t]rauma brings about a dissociation of affect and representation … Workin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The politics of trauma
• 2 Peace-building and the politics of responsibility
• 3 Peace-building as community politics in Northern Ireland
• 4 Drawing on the past: ideology, reconciliation and nationalism in Northern Ireland
• 5 Historical accountability and the democratization of memory
• 6 Literarity and historical responsibility
• 7 Conclusion: lessons from Northern Ireland
• Index