Introduction

The introduction begins with a detailed examination of literary trauma theory and its limitations in analyzing postcolonial literature. Detaching the term from its western, psychoanalytic lineage, I define trauma as a confluence of disparate social, historical, and political currents that demands a relational awareness of the material environment, rather than clinical diagnosis. I then trace the recent rise of material ecocriticism in literary studies, demonstrating how its emphasis on relationality borrows from nonwestern and indigenous belief systems but deracinates and abstracts these beliefs for a tacitly white and western cultural readership. Lastly, I introduce animism as an aesthetic frame through which to analyze trauma in postcolonial literature, paying special attention to the topics of healing and empathy in Nigerian and Indian cultural traditions.