The Formation of Black Identity Through Trauma

Black identity in the United States has been shaped by race-based trauma that transcends location and time. James Baldwin in his book Notes of a Native Son recollects his experience in Europe on a self-imposed exile to find an identity outside of his race and ancestry. However, he realises at the end that it is because of his race and his ancestry that he can formulate a new sense of identity, one that encapsulates historical and generational trauma faced by black people in America. Cathy Caruth states how trauma presents itself after the moment of creation, making locatability of trauma difficult and asserting trauma as a ‘symptom of history.’ Achille Mbembe in “Necropolitics” argues that racism is linked directly to the politics of death and systematically legitimized forms of distributing death. Michelle Balaev tracks how trauma is represented in literature and narratives, and how writers enforce a sense of agency and authority over their traumatic experience. This paper argues that black identity is inescapably tied to historical trauma, a trauma that is defined by the presence of death and the impossibility of being located consciously and historically. This is significant because rather than the unlocatability and threatening nature of trauma hinder and destroy a sense of identity, it can be used to embolden a new black identity and foster resiliency. 

Caruth argues that trauma, due to its belatedness and latency, becomes a symptom of history and creates difficulty in the locatability of trauma. Caruth states that an experience manifests itself as traumatic because “the event is not assimilated or experienced fully at the time, but only belatedly” (Caruth 3). She argues that at the moment of experience, a person does not fully experience the event because they are focused on survival. It is after survival and a period of time has passed, that the event is fully experienced and induces the trauma. There is “an inherent latency within the experience itself” that makes the trauma present itself afterwards and “it is evident only in connection with another place, and in another time” (7). The person is able to fully experience the event after it has passed, as trauma, when they are connected to a certain place or time that allows introspection and self-reflection, which will be detailed further later in the paper in the discussion of Baldwin and Balaev. 

Moreover, Caruth identifies that trauma then becomes a “symptom of history” because the person with trauma “carries an impossible history within them, or they themselves become the symptom of a history that they cannot entirely possess” (4). What she means in this argument is that the event which ignited the traumatic response carries within itself a historical significance, either on a social scale or on an individual level. The belatedness and latency of the trauma response creates an impossibility to precisely locate access that historical moment physically or temporally, both by the traumatised individual, and by the audience attempting to understand or cure the trauma. And so, the past, the realm within which the event occurred, is not accessible consciously rendering history with no place both in the past when it occurred and in the present when it cannot be accessed (419). The trauma that the individual ‘posses’ then becomes both the “truth of an event, and the truth of its incomprehensibility” which also be explored further in the discussion of Baldwin (420). 

Mbembe focuses on the power and politics of death, i.e., necropolitics, particularly how the constant confrontation with and presence of death contributes to systematic domination and oppression of populations. The main way death is politicised is by categorising and distributing people based on who deserves to live and who do not (Mbembe 17). This is usually done based on race because in Western politics it is a justified dominance over foreign people. Mbembe references Arendt’s argument that the politics of race is the politics of death and he asserts that “the function of racism is to regulate the distribution of death and to make possible the murderous functions of the state” (17). The way to organise and systematically, on a societal and political level, oppress and dominate groups of people is done through perpetuating the presence of death. The underlying motivation for racism and states that have strict divisive groups is because they, the dominant population, believe that “biophysical elimination would strengthen [their] potential to life and security” (18). Mbembe highlights a dual presence of death here. The dominant group has a ‘falsified’ idea that the racially different groups pose a threat to their lives, and therefore they must engage in threating the life of those very racially different groups. Both groups, intentionally and unintentionally, present death to the other and enforce a tension. 

Furthermore, Mbembe spotlights slavery of the African population as a demonstration of how absolute domination presents itself. The slave condition, he argues, “results from a triple loss: loss of a ‘home,’ loss of rights over his or her body, and loss of political status” (21). This triple loss culminates to absolute domination and is an “expulsion from humanity altogether” (21). Slaves are ‘instruments of labour’ and therefore have a certain level of utility, function, and a price. This labour is used and abused at the expense of the slave who is “kept alive but in a state of injury, in a phantom-like world of horrors and intense cruelty” which is essentially “death-in-life” (21).  African slaves were kept in constant presence of death, their physical bodies became vessels for carrying the tension between life and death, for both the slaves and for the White masters, as mentioned before in the duality of the death threat. The racial violence committed against African peoples is because African populations are not considered ‘civilised’ and therefore not worthy of being considered an equal enemy (24). This intentional unrecognition is used to justify the inhumane cruelty forced upon the slaves and forms the foundation of race relations in America. 

Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, in particular chapters “Equal in Paris” and “Stranger in the Village” demonstrate both Caruth and Mbembe’s arguments of necropower and the unlocatability of history, and how the trauma resulting from these contribute to reflections of identity. Balaev discusses a transhistorical and intergenerational theory of trauma in literature where historical trauma experienced by a on a mass group can be experienced by people that share attributes to that group, such as race, religion, gender etc. These theories, she argues, conflates “the distinctions between personal loss actually experienced by an individual and a historical absence found in one’s ancestral lineage” (Balaev 152). She establishes slavery in North America as an example of this where there was a “historical absence for the descendants of slaves who ancestors were not granted citizenship and all ensuring rights and protections” leading to the formation of political institutions in America that reinforced these racial dynamics, creating personal loss and trauma for the descendants (153). On the one hand, African Americans who are descendants of the slaves are denied access to history and the moment of traumatic experience that their ancestors faced. On the other hand, the political systems in place that reinforce these historical dynamics ensure that both the state and the African American population carry within them this history of trauma. Baldwin writes that history is “the nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them” (Baldwin 163). 

Baldwin’s argument reflects Caruth’s assertion that trauma is a ‘symptom of history’ and Mbeme’s argument about how necropower ignited this trauma that is now passed down intergenerationally on a personal and political level. Baldwin imagines, while being the only black man in the Swiss village, the first white men that arrived in Africa and how they share the feeling of being alien to the other (163). The difference though, is that the White man was seen by both racial groups as civilized, while the Black man, in the past, and in the present in the Swiss village, are seen as inferior. He reflects on how the Swiss people were not convinced of his American citizenship because they know that “black men come from Africa” (161). His lived experience in this Swiss village, an experience that is riddled with alienation and isolation, is a descendant of European colonisation and enslavement of African people. Descendancy works on a double level; on an individual level where Baldwin as an African from America is a descendant himself of slaves, and on an institutional level where the perceptions and treatment towards Black people descend from the original colonial period. The location of the Swiss village enables Baldwin to engage in these reflections and imaginations. As mentioned before, Caruth argued that the connection to place and time allows for both the individual and the audience to fully experience and begin to understand the trauma that lives on, in this case, beyond location and time. Balaev states that “collective memories of slavery ‘haunt’ descendants of slaves and reinscribe the trauma and shame experienced” (Balaev 154). 

The black identity itself becomes a vessel for trauma and history that is inaccessible and inescapable. Balaev refers Bouson’s argument that African Americans’ “racial identity is locked within ‘painful and shameful race matters’” (154). She further argues that “if trauma is represented in relation to the intersection of personal and political identities and experiences, then the individual experiences… are often a result of larger cultural forces” (156). Baldwin writes that the children in the village shout the derogatory ‘N’ slur at him, but with innocence (Baldwin 168). This one word encapsulates individual, political, and cultural implications. Language is a major catalyst in the evocation and provocation of traumatic responses. The slur in this village is not used in the same violent manner that it is used towards him in America and towards his ancestors during enslavement. However, because that word has been used as an identifier for black people, it is a part of his identity and so, his identity embodies historical violence and trauma. Even though Baldwin himself is not experiencing the moment of trauma that his ancestors faced, he is living and embodying the trauma itself in his body. Even though he does not have direct access to the moment of trauma, he cannot escape the trauma itself because the trauma presents itself in his body, in the language he speaks, and in the ways other racial groups interact with him. 

The historical memories of the ‘death-in-life’ faced by slaves, as argued by Mbembe, may not be directly accessible on a conscious level due to political interference, but it is accessible in the present lived experience of a black person. When Baldwin is in the Parisian prison, the question he faced was “not what I was, but who” (146). ‘What’ and ‘who’ represent inhumanity and humanity, respectively. As Mbembe mentioned, the justification of European colonisation and enslavement was because African people were not seen as equal enemies or as human. American treatment of black men, in Baldwin’s perception, was one that dehumanised him. Even though he is recognised as a citizen with official rights and liberties, cultural and political forces ensure that the way his ancestors were treated, as objects and tools to be used and abused, continue in his lifetime as well. However, he realises that in this Parisian prison, he is being considered as a ‘who,’ a person. The discrimination and prejudice he faces in this experience is with the recognition of being human, which makes it worse. As Mbembe argued previously, the dominant group feels a sense of security when the other racial groups are eliminated. Baldwin writes that black people are seen in America to “jeopardise their status as White men” who are “civilizations’ guardians and defenders” (172). The difference between the two racial groups is that “the white man’s motive was the protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an identity” (173). The dual death threat is present in this experience as Baldwin realises he cannot perceive the “danger coming” if he did not know how the Parisians perceived him (146). Both groups view the other as a presence of death. The Parisians see Baldwin’s difference, in his American citizenship and in his Blackness, and difference is threatening to their lives, leading them to arrest him and attempt to reduce Baldwin’s life. Baldwin sees the Parisians as threatening to his life, because without knowledge about how he is viewed, he cannot defend himself from the danger he knows is coming towards him. And so, the racist treatment that Baldwin faces, even if not explicit, is a demonstration of Mbembe’s assertion that racism is a distribution of death that is legitimized by the state.  

One point on interest in Baldwin’s narrative recollection of his time in the Parisian prison is the amount of withheld information which connects to Caruth’s argument about the unspeakability and incomprehensibility of trauma in narrative form. Caruth argues that in narration, one may lose “both the precision and the force that characterises traumatic recall,” but “the impossibility of a comprehensible story, however, does not necessarily mean the denial of a transmissible truth” (Caruth 421). Caruth suggests that because of how trauma presents, belatedly and latently with unlocatability, narrating one’s traumatic experience can reduce the impact it had on the traumatised individual. However, she argues, the loss of this precision in narration does not mean that it denies the audience a chance to understand the experience or comprehend its truth. In Baldwin’s narration of his experience in the Parisian prison, he writes a lot about self-reflection and the environmental features he encounters like the Nigerian people, but does not write explicitly about the treatment he received. He compares his treatment to America, as mentioned previously, and he uses each advancement in time in the prison as moments of reflection on his identity as an African American, but does not detail any violence or malicious treatment. Balaev suggests that “what is withheld from the reader regarding traumatic experience is conditioned by social standards and narrative conventions available to the writer at the time of composition” and that the author makes a conscious rhetorical implementation of “silence and ambiguity, rather than corporeal description” (Balaev 157). 

What would on a surface level seem as a hinderance to understanding trauma and traumatic narration, silence and ambiguity is used as a tool to highlight the severity and extent to which racial tensions can present itself. The audience can imagine, based on the given information in his reflections the kind of treatment he may or may not have received while in prison, which is a much more truthful recollection of his traumatic experience. Balaev states that “by withholding an explicit account, the writer creates greater suspense and repulsion because it allows the reader to imagine her or his own worst fears of abuse and violation” (158). Trauma is not consciously accessible, as Caruth asserts. The written narrative is a representation of conscious accessibility, whereas the silence and ambiguity is a representation of the inaccessibility and the lack of control the individual has on how the trauma can ‘possess’ them. These rhetorical and narrative strategies help “structure the narrative into a form that attempts to embody the psychological ‘action’ of traumatic memory” (Balaev 159).

Ultimately, the exposure to trauma on a transhistorical, intergenerational and personal level allows Baldwin to build resiliency and form a stronger, more rounded sense of identity that uses trauma to strengthen rather than weaken his sense of self. Balaev suggest that through narration and experiencing trauma that transcends place and time, an inherent sense of resiliency and strength “prevails against traumatic experiences and moves beyond an identity simply defined by a past traumatic event” (158). Baldwin writes that because of how race relations has played out in America, history has created “a new black man, it has created a new white man too” and that “this world is white no longer, and it will never be white again” (Baldwin 175). By travelling outside of America on this self imposed exile, Baldwin is able to connect deeper with both is American identity and his Black identity. Location and time, two entities that seemingly may disrupt a formation of self identity, because of the contradictory forms of treatment Baldwin receives when in Europe, is used to strengthen his sense of self and create a new way of understanding the world order. He decides to turn history on its head. History claimed his ancestors and their descendants to be inferior to the white man, and the world was dominated by white men. But, because of the violence and trauma the white men and their institutions have caused, it created a level of African integration and interdependency that cannot be undone. Black identity, and white identity, are inherently dependent on each other now. As Mbembe stated, one group’s identity is based on the threat the other presents. There is no white man without a black man, and there is no black man without a white man. The world, therefore, can no longer be considered a white man’s world because the white man has made it a black man’s world too. And so, Baldwin “portrays an alternative perspective on the meaning of traumatic experience that emphasises the reformulation of identity, not simply the destruction of the self” (Balaev 159). 

Disclaimer: This work is original and the property of Aroni Sarkar. It is not authorised for any use, copies or dissemination.

Works Cited

Balaev, Michelle. “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol 41, no. 2, June 2008, pp149-166.

Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. Beacon Press, 1955, pp 138-175.

Caruth, Cathy. “Introduction.” American Imago, vol 48, no. 1, Spring 1991, pp 1-12. 

Caruth, Cathy. “Introduction.” American Imago, vol 48, no. 4, Winter 1991, pp 417-424.

Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture, vol 15, no. 1, Winter 2003, pp 11-40.