Читать книгу Colonial Trauma - Karima Lazali - Страница 17

The unceasing, demonic blows of the real spare no one. Everyone is exposed to them to varying degrees. Hence the unrelenting sense of a looming danger, which is all the more troubling as the source of the trauma remains unknown: heaven or earth, inside or outside, the state or religion, and so on.

Various forms of violence are embedded and rehearsed in the social sphere. For example, the vulnerability of subjects is even more acutely felt at sites of social interaction (institutions, work, family). Their feeling of defenselessness causes them to turn inward, becoming withdrawn and disengaged in order to avoid being exposed to danger. This produces a sort of tension in a public seeking a feeling of existence: on the one hand, the social fabric is being torn to pieces from all directions and continues to grapple with the long history of its fight to become a “nation,” the impacts of which are hard to measure; and, on the other hand, there is also an attempt to patch up these tears, a necessary step for moving on with one’s life, but also the source of new forms of violence. The social sphere both stages and witnesses these catastrophes, but it also strives at all times to cover them up, dismissing their very existence. In so doing, it only throws matters into further disarray.

Behind this tension between tearing open and patching up is the experience of the living, which has come under attack and which deserves further scrutiny. The expression of a damaged life in the social sphere and the ability of this expression to spread and wreak havoc on a subject’s future should be interrogated. For the individual subject cannot be reduced to the community. It traces its own private paths that are both within the public and unreachable at its margins. And yet serious conflicts within the larger public bar the emergence of subjectivities. An unavoidable clash arises, one that is designed to serve a political purpose. Repeat experiences of trauma have directly affected people’s relation to faith, as the resurgent visibility of religious practices has made clear. The importance of the visible forms these practices assume cannot be overstated. The material transformation of “belief” has a very particular social function, suggesting that faith depends on its visible demonstration although it remains invisible as a private matter. Faith, once immaterial, then assumes a demonstrable material existence, one that is put on display for all to see. Does this mean that religion has become no more than an outward display? What is behind this almost physical staging of belief?

The display of divine obedience serves as a bulwark against a feeling of insecurity that views the outside world as dangerous in light of its distant and not so distant past. Freud sees the “need for religion” as deriving from the infant’s experience of helplessness. This deep-seated feeling “is permanently sustained by fear of the superior power of Fate.”⁴ The “infant’s helplessness” is a primal experience of subjectivity. Each infant experiences it before a “figure of comfort” (usually the mother or a substitute) comes to put an end to its helplessness (unpleasant feelings, hunger, cold, pain, etc.). The “figure of comfort” registers as coming from the outside. This remains stamped on the psyche. Throughout the course of a person’s life, these silent traces of helplessness may be reawakened when the subject is confronted by danger. This primal experience marks an initial separation between inside and outside, and creates a welcomed and awaited experience of alterity. Indeed, the comfort and security brought to the crying infant by this figure allows it to begin to distinguish between inside and outside. This is how the subject at this early stage discovers the existence of difference. The outside becomes the source of calm for inner stirrings, discomfort, pain. The subject also learns to construct an interiority to shield off dangers emanating from the outside. It “interiorizes” the figure of a supportive Other, which henceforth will remain within it. At times, it may still call on the exterior figure when the interiority it constructed isn’t enough to handle the dangers that threaten it.

This primal experience of alterity plays a decisive role as it serves as a compass for navigating between internal and external reality. The outside appears as a potential source of comfort. If this Other fails to appease the child or if he or she is malicious, it can have devastating effects on the child. The only option then is to appeal to a higher power, one that is greater than humankind, since the “trust” in humans has been effectively shattered. It is worth noting that the term “trust” has taken on a negative connotation in Algeria today: it points to a significant phenomenon that dates back to the Internal War, namely, the failure of the (internal/external) Other to be a figure of comfort and security. Regular discussions with patients confirm this widespread inability to trust others, including the institutions of healthcare, law, and education. These institutions have thus seemingly lost their status as mediators in a country whose staunchly socialist government once made healthcare, education, and legal protections accessible to all at no cost. This breakdown in trust suggests that the outside and the inside are themselves sources of constant threats, and that overcoming this is anything but straightforward.

But patching over widespread despair with an overzealous display of faith isn’t enough to appease a profound feeling of danger. There is a growing sense of destitution and insecurity. Let’s not forget that Algeria has a long history of turning to religion as a remedy for human despair amid a political crisis. Recent events (the Internal War, natural catastrophes, “malvie”) have only reinforced this tendency. Mohammed Dib wrote as early as 1970: “Placing our trivial concerns in the hands of God, isn’t that wonderful? Only we could come up with such insights.”⁵ Elsewhere, he makes his point clear: “Our desire to also put ourselves in God’s place knows no bounds.”⁶

An excess of religious zeal goes hand in hand with a rising sense of danger and an absence of “trust.” The subject sees itself in peril with no one to turn to, and, as a result, it multiplies its offerings to a supposed divine power and demonstrates its faith in a more conspicuous manner. In this way, these visible displays of faith are like so many unanswered calls. It is as though the very lack of divine response led to a dramatic increase in the need for religion. For these demonstrations of “belief” in the social sphere rarely produce the desired results, since “God chose to let us deal with his absence and our state of abandonment on our own.”⁷ Is this display a way of reassuring God about His own existence while trust in Him in the private sphere is thrown into doubt?

Where can one seek help if God, who remains at the helm, struggles to steer private and public life? And where can we turn when the institutions designed to protect us run aground on the shores of despair? Would secularization make our institutions more robust and trustworthy?