Koloniaal
Trauma

Een persoonlijke kijk op koloniaal trauma in lichamen

Deze beschouwing werd uitgesproken tijdens een tweedaags event rondom Joy DeGruy in Den Haag in september 2024. Dit event bestond uit een symposium en een training over het posttraumatische slavernij syndroom.

I am Marlous van den Akker, cultural anthropologist, and I work for KIEN (the Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage), where I examine how Dutch colonial pasts continue to echo in contemporary cultural practices. I’m standing here somewhat uncomfortably. I will try to explain why, and why I’m standing here at all.

One afternoon months ago, Jose Tojo casually mentioned Project Ankaa to me, and the project’s attempts to realise this symposium. I was surprised, in a positive way, for at the time I was just trying to get my head around a project proposal that advocated why trauma related to slavery and colonialism is a concern that KIEN should not ignore. One of the reasons for this, I meant to argue, is that a lack of care or curiosity would be unethical. If KIEN wants to cultivate relations build on respect and integrity with communities in which this kind of trauma is a reality, than it should actively invest in understanding how the mechanisms work. It’s relevant for KIEN to recognise, for instance, what the daily effects of this kind of trauma may look like, to realise that its own behaviour and approach may trigger strong emotions, or that certain taken-for-granted modes of working may be counterproductive in settings where trauma is present.

So I responded enthusiastically to Jose’s announcement, and asked him to keep me informed. A couple of weeks later, it must have been late July, he called to say that the Cultural Participation Fund awarded a grant, and that Project Ankaa had begun making arrangements to bring Dr. Joy DeGruy to The Netherlands. He also told me that their budget was somewhat tight, and asked me if perhaps I knew of any sponsors that could potentially be interested to donate. I put two and two together, went to my manager, and made a plea to financially contribute to this symposium. The rest is history.

So now I stand here. The idea is that I explain to you, in a few words, why KIEN decided to partner up. In theory, that shouldn’t be too difficult – I mean, I know why I argued in favour of a donation, I know why I think KIEN should take colonial trauma seriously, I know why I think that research on the relation between this kind of trauma and people’s cultural expressions may learn us something new about the complicated and divers, but also the subconscious and latent ways in which trauma may live on. And yet, whilst preparing for this few minutes talk, I struggled. Not a little bit – I struggled seriously.

I complained about it to a friend, who himself is trying to make peace with the colonial trauma in him and the generations before him. ‘What’s your problem?’ he asked. ‘Ahh I don’t know, I just can’t seem to find the right tone of voice’, I moaned. ‘Why not?’ he continued, ‘What makes it so difficult for you?’. I couldn’t give him a coherent answer. Instead I began to sum up a number of things, such as that I didn’t want to sound too formal or detached, for I felt that empathy and humanity were preconditions for any dealing with this theme. But I also didn’t want to make it too personal because that felt out of place too. I considered showing that I was informed and had knowledge on the subject, but at the same time I feared that I would sound like a know-it-all. If anything, I wanted to convey modesty. Not only as a person, as an anthropologist and as a researcher, but also as KIEN’s representative. Because yes, the organisation had made a donation – but it was relatively small, let’s be honest about that, and I found it inappropriate to draw much attention to it.

‘Sounds like you are overthinking it,’ my friend said. I get such comments a lot, they are a bit of a red button for me – primarily because there is truth in it, of course. I do believe that being involved in a considerate way requires, well, a

serious amount of consideration. But my friend was right in confronting me with the fact that, apparently, I had come to a point where my contemplating didn’t do me much good anymore. I had a hunch what he was about to say, and he indeed said it. ‘Forget it all, speak from your heart,’ he advised me. ‘If you are honest, people will know it and appreciate you for it.’

So… honesty. There are mornings that I get through my front door, out onto the streets, and wonder how many people with a heavy heart I will pass that day. The complicated thing about emotional suffering, is that its causes are never unequivocal. Rather, emotional suffering is the result of a complicated interplay between what happens in one’s life, the way one processes that, and eventually deals with it. It makes a difference how we spend the first years of our lives, the messages we received when we were a child, and which believes about ourselves and the world around us we internalised on the way. It makes a difference whether we have learned to express or suppress our emotions, whether there are people around us who support and love us, and whether we can see a way out or feel like being trapped in eternal darkness.

If I try, very carefully, tentatively and intuitively, to translate these understandings to the context of slavery and black oppression, I cringe. Because what do you internalise about yourself when you are born, not as a human being but as a commodity? What do you internalise about the world when you see your relatives, if you are lucky enough to grow up in their vicinity, being aggressively exploited and abused day in, day out? What does it teach you about power and your own agency? What if expressing emotions is seriously life threatening? What if anyone you are attached to, may disappear overnight to never come back?

The enslaved people that outlived this brutal system, or managed to escape from it, raised children. They in turn raised theirs, they raised theirs, they raised theirs, they raised theirs, and here were are. Sitting here today. One of the more pressing questions, at least for me, is to what extend the messages about the world and about oneself that people internalised under extremely grave and oppressive colonial circumstances, were passed on to the young people in their lives. How much, and which parts of those messages can we still distinguish today? And where should we look for those messages – in parenting styles, in what we have come to accept as ‘personal traits’, in cultural activities and customs, in human flesh and bones? For the body remembers as well, in ways the mind cannot always understand. Yet we witness the manifestations of toxic messages and memories, for instance in low self-esteem, self-sabotage, permanent feelings of shame, attachment difficulties or distrust.

I realise very well that trauma is not a straightforward phenomenon, and the ways in which it moves through generations is even less so. I realise that how a person develops, depends on many things. No one is merely trauma. And I realise as well that trauma in itself is a very political label and category. But sometimes, when I walk through that front door in the morning, I just long for a day when I will see less pain in the bodies that I greet on my way.

So my last remark is an invitation. Anyone here who shares my longing, and desires to talk this over, calmly, one on one, please approach me. Come over to me, mail me, call me, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I have my story, my internalised messages, my pains, my questions, the things that occupy my mind – and you have yours. We can learn from each other and carry each other. So let us meet.