ABSTRACT
The theory of cultural trauma emerged from the social sciences in the early twenty-first century, and in light of the increasing interest in what has by become an established research paradigm, scholars working within the field have lately begun taking stock. This chapter demonstrates the fact that the African American collective identity was not significantly revised in light of the traumatic event means that this historical case would not have been deemed a cultural trauma had the researcher been working with the traumatized societies iteration of cultural trauma theory. The theory of traumatic events focuses on the discursive struggle over the meaning of an event. In that struggle, various narratives claiming to accurately represent the truth of the event are put forward by different groups. An application of the theory of traumatic events similar to Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s can be found in E. Zhukova’s work on the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union.
