Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

analyzing them. Accordingly, the main aim of this study is to provide a social semiotic reading of cartoons
about refugees in a number of European and Australian magazines. The point which is of special significance
in such a reading is how the asylum-seekers are othered in these cartoons. In other words, how they are
represented as the Other in such texts is highlighted in this study. Since the practice of migration can be
considered as leaving the old home in order to find a new home, it seems that the concepts of “home” and
“homeland” play a significant role in the representation of refugees as the Other in the cartoons. Thus, via
providing a critical social semiotic reading, this study focuses on the metaphorization of “home” in these
texts in order to explore comparatively the role of this concept in the process of othering the refugees in the
European and Australian media.
5B
Postcoloniality and Trauma Theory (Chair, Felicity Ford)
Simone Drichel Colonialism’s Relational Trauma
Although Frantz Fanon’s encounter with the white child’s gaze – “Look, a Negro” – has long been considered
a paradigmatic moment of colonial trauma, the conversation between trauma theory and postcolonial
studies is only slowly, and somewhat reluctantly, gaining momentum. The reasons for this reluctance, I
propose, lie in the very different conceptions of trauma that are being mobilised in the two fields. As Stef
Craps notes in Postcolonial Witnessing, “Cultural trauma theory continues to adhere to the traditional eventbased
model of trauma, according to which trauma results from a single, extraordinary, catastrophic event,”
adding that this—fundamentally Freudian—model does not lend itself to understanding the “traumatic
impact of racism and other forms of ongoing oppression.” This paper argues that the kind of trauma that
marks the colonial encounter is better conceived of as relational trauma and that, as Fanon puts it in the
context of his discussion of the “so-called dependency complex” of the Malagasy in Black Skin, White Masks,
“the discoveries of Freud are of no use for us here.” Instead, I propose, it is the work of object relations
theorists (esp. D. W. Winnicott and Masud Khan) that can offer the kind of “psychoanalytic interpretation of
the black problem” that Fanon calls for, allowing us to bring to light the pathological dynamics of a relational
trauma that an event-based model inevitably remains blind to.
Ahlam Mustafa Memory of the Nakba as an Identity Marker: the Question of Remembering Insidious/Chronic
Trauma
This study examines the ways in which the Nakba of 1948 “catastrophe”, integrated culturally, socially, and
politically into the Palestinian identity. Through the analysis of Radwa Ashour’s novel “The Woman from
Tantoura”, I argue that the Nakba as a traumatic experience provides an example of how postcolonial modes
of traumatic narrative reflect an alternative perspective of the traumatized self. The prolonged and
multifaceted nature of this traumatic experience triggers a series of reactions towards traumatic events as
variant as the traumas themselves. The result of which was reflected in a fractured self that is torn apart
between the obligations of remembering, and the desire to forget past atrocities. Through exposing the
mechanisms by which the Nakba affected Palestinian identity construction, I aim to question the Western
models of identity formation, as well as demonstrate the possibility of integrating traumatic experiences into
a functional self.
Magdalena Zolkos Traumatic Repetition and/or Post-trauma: Reading Hanya Yanagihara’s The People in the
Trees with Freud and with Malabou
127