CONSIDERATIONS ON THE USE OF THE TRAUMA CATEGORY IN AFRICAN STUDIES: FREUD AND POST-COLONIAL PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze, from a theoretical point of view, the potentialities and gaps of the concept of trauma when it comes to the field of African studies. The article explores Sigmund Freud's propositions and recent criticisms by researchers in the social and human sciences, starting from what has been called postcolonial trauma theory. The considerations are carried out in dialogue with the methodology of global history, which proved to be adequate for the present writing as an interpretive perspective. The article points out that the inconsequential and uncritical use of both theoretical strands of trauma can lead the scholar to cultural essentialisms that they often discursively struggle against and that the aforementioned concept cannot be reduced to the Western-Oriental binarism, due to the confluence of ideas, theories and ways of life in the globalized world.