Whose shadow is it? The representation of trauma and creativity in Anton Nimblett’s ‘Ring Games’ and ‘Sections of an Orange’

ABSTRACT

Intervening in the current debate about an overemphasis on the individual in classical psychoanalytic trauma theory and the demand for a prioritization of the group in postcolonial trauma studies, this article proposes that Anton Nimblett’s short stories ‘Ring Games’ and titular ‘Sections of an Orange’ from his 2009 collection invite a postcolonial, post-Jungian optic because they portray the devastating effects of a colonized creative unconscious on the characters’ Self, relationships, and the collective. Both short stories explore the traumatic impact of colonialism and neoliberalism on the development of the characters’ unconscious and consciousness, unveiling the obstacles to re-inscribing a traditional heteronormative, Euro-American image of masculinity; individuating as gay; and living an authentic life. Questioning the binary opposites of the individual and the group, both short stories gesture towards the importance of creative self-realization as one cornerstone of individual and collective health when healing the destructive impact of postcolonial and neoliberal power configurations.

KEYWORDS:

• Anton Nimblett
• Trinidad
• black psychology
• postcolonial trauma
• homosexuality
• imagination
• post-Jung

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Erratum

Notes on contributor

Jutta Schamp is a lecturer at California State University, Dominguez Hills and California State University, Northridge. She has written a book-length study, Die Repräsentation von Zeit bei Shakespeare, on the representation of time in Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV, and Macbeth (1997). More recent publications include articles on the reconfiguration of Jewish American femininities, post-Holocaust literature, Shakespeare appropriation, the representation of black and Jewish relations, as well as trauma, transfiguration, and literary alchemy in the works of the Guyanese-British writer, David Dabydeen. Her latest article on re-imagined alchemy and individuation in Anton Nimblett’s Sections of an Orange and Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming’s Curry Flavour’ was published in the Journal of Postcolonial Writing (Routledge) in June 2016.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. According to Thomas Glave, one of the most prominent Jamaican LGBT activists, writer, and professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Rex Nettleford was gay and lived a more private, quiet queerness (Campbell, 2014, pp. 53–54).