"The Body Keeps the Score": Meditations on Trauma and the Colonized Body
The Body Keeps the Score is a seminal 2014 text authored by Bessel Van der Kolk, a Dutch psychiatrist with decades of specialized experience in treating post-traumatic stress disorder. The title of the book poetically condenses its thesis: the body holds on to trauma long after we feel we are past it. The experience of reading Fanon immediately took me back to this book, especially while reading his reflections on violence and its very physiological manifestation in the body of the colonizer:
"In the colonial world, the colonized's affectivity is kept on edge like a running sore flinching from a caustic agent. And the psyche retracts, is obliterated, and finds an outlet through muscular spasms that have caused many an expert to classify the colonized as hysterical. This overexcited affectivity, spied on by invisible guardians who constantly communicate with the core of the personality, takes an erotic delight in the muscular deflation of the crisis."
In the section of therapeutic approaches to treating PTSD, Van der Kolk discusses a paradigm of psychotherapy called "Internal Family Systems". In this paradigm, the "Self" is understood as consisting of distinct parts each with its own distinct “history” and “worldview”, the exiles, the managers and the firefighters.
The exiles are the part of the self that are termed thus precisely because they hold the deepest trauma,
experienced at the time of true helplessness, and thus, are too painful to be remembered and assimilated
into the larger self. Managers and firefighters take on the task of safeguarding the consciousness from
the full experience of this trauma that’s locked away.
experienced at the time of true helplessness, and thus, are too painful to be remembered and assimilated
into the larger self. Managers and firefighters take on the task of safeguarding the consciousness from
the full experience of this trauma that’s locked away.
The difference between the two is as follows:
Firefighters will do anything to make emotional pain go away. Aside from sharing the task of keeping
the exiles locked up, they are the opposite of managers: Managers are all about staying in control,
while firefighters will destroy the house in order to extinguish the fire”
the exiles locked up, they are the opposite of managers: Managers are all about staying in control,
while firefighters will destroy the house in order to extinguish the fire”
This helps me establish the paradigm through which I want to look at Fanon’s understanding of violence.
He was primarily a psychiatrist by profession and his study of violence can help expand trauma theory
with respect to institutionalized forms of violence. The function of violence in the (de)colonial context is
akin to that of the firefighters: frantic, urgent, destructive. In fact, so unmitigated is it in its scope that it
even turns the colonized body against his brother. Fanon mentions this when he refers to the various
forms of release that this amorphous antagonism takes: “We have seen that this violence throughout
the colonial period, although constantly on edge, runs on empty [...].We have seen it exhaust itself in
fratricidal struggles.” In drawing the trajectory of the various targets of this violence, Fanon shows how
it starts at home and finds its ultimate kill in the form of the colonizer. Fanon is merely describing a
psychological phenomenon, a physical fact, and a political reality. If he is sympathetic to violent struggle,
it is only because it’s the most just expression of this violence that has nowhere else to go. It exists now
on the elemental level of the colonized body, transferred through generations, defining his very
consciousness. When Fanon refers to the muscular spasms caused by this neural activity, do we not see
the colonized body suffering a double violence, first by the direct act of the colonizer, now by his traumatic legacy?
He was primarily a psychiatrist by profession and his study of violence can help expand trauma theory
with respect to institutionalized forms of violence. The function of violence in the (de)colonial context is
akin to that of the firefighters: frantic, urgent, destructive. In fact, so unmitigated is it in its scope that it
even turns the colonized body against his brother. Fanon mentions this when he refers to the various
forms of release that this amorphous antagonism takes: “We have seen that this violence throughout
the colonial period, although constantly on edge, runs on empty [...].We have seen it exhaust itself in
fratricidal struggles.” In drawing the trajectory of the various targets of this violence, Fanon shows how
it starts at home and finds its ultimate kill in the form of the colonizer. Fanon is merely describing a
psychological phenomenon, a physical fact, and a political reality. If he is sympathetic to violent struggle,
it is only because it’s the most just expression of this violence that has nowhere else to go. It exists now
on the elemental level of the colonized body, transferred through generations, defining his very
consciousness. When Fanon refers to the muscular spasms caused by this neural activity, do we not see
the colonized body suffering a double violence, first by the direct act of the colonizer, now by his traumatic legacy?
In a tragic poeticism, this notion of the exile is strikingly apt for describing the condition of being colonized,
a form of exile from your own homeland. Violence “deflates the crisis” of the colonized psyche, because
the threat of bringing back the exiles threatens the colonized Self with annihilation. So painful is the memory
of abjection, that the full remembered pain of powerlessness threatens your sense of self. The violence of
decoloniality functions to maintain a sense of self, fiercely differentiated from the colonizer. In my understanding,
the colonized subject uses violence as self-defence even in the absence of an imminent physical threat because
the body is caught in the throes of older trauma that has become timeless, inescapable and a threat his own self.
a form of exile from your own homeland. Violence “deflates the crisis” of the colonized psyche, because
the threat of bringing back the exiles threatens the colonized Self with annihilation. So painful is the memory
of abjection, that the full remembered pain of powerlessness threatens your sense of self. The violence of
decoloniality functions to maintain a sense of self, fiercely differentiated from the colonizer. In my understanding,
the colonized subject uses violence as self-defence even in the absence of an imminent physical threat because
the body is caught in the throes of older trauma that has become timeless, inescapable and a threat his own self.
The work of decolonization as healing can only really happen when these exiles are brought back into the colonized
consciousness bringing with them the shared memory of pain, of humiliation, and of subjection. It is important to
grieve the wounds of the past and it is only when this act of grieving happens that the exiles can be brought home to safety.This firmly establishes the trauma as in the past, historicizing it. The previously colonized subject can now move towards a decolonial
existence. Merely trying to forget this past will not do because the body keeps the score.
consciousness bringing with them the shared memory of pain, of humiliation, and of subjection. It is important to
grieve the wounds of the past and it is only when this act of grieving happens that the exiles can be brought home to safety.This firmly establishes the trauma as in the past, historicizing it. The previously colonized subject can now move towards a decolonial
existence. Merely trying to forget this past will not do because the body keeps the score.
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