UNIVERSITY OF CAPE COAST

COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES AND LEGAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

A Reading of Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail, Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon and

Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s Trafficked as Postcolonial Traumatic Narratives

Submitted by:

ALFRED OKRAH

AR/LIT/20/0001

MPhil Literature in English

Abstract
Beyond the Horizon, Becoming Abigail and Trafficked are some of the most popular works of

Amma Darko, Chris Abani and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo respectively. This is, partly, because of

the rare insights these works have shed on the ordeals and traumatic experiences that women

who are trafficked from Africa, specifically, the West African sub-region into forced prostitution

in Europe endure. In spite of this, the critical attentions on these novels have not given enough

attention to the trauma of the victims. What is more, no attempts have been made to study these

novels as traumatic narratives. Consequently, this thesis seeks to study these three novels as

traumatic narratives by focusing on the defining representational strategies that have been

adopted by the respective authors of the novels. The study will adopt the postcolonial trauma

theory and Dominic LaCapra’s concept of empathic unsettlement to analyse the texts.

Preliminary analysis of the data reveals that the symptoms of the trauma fall under both

psychological and insidious trauma. The novels also use some common defining features in the

representation of the trauma which include the use of bildungsroman framework to elicit

desirable empathy in readers, framing of the narratives to expose the collective complicity and

vulnerability of Ghanaians and Nigerians to the trauma of the victims and the use of victim

bonding as a coping and/or healing strategy.

Key words: Postcolonial traumatic narrative, women, LaCapra, complicity, trafficking

1.1 Background to the study

Literature reflects society and African writers, over the years, have strived to use their

works to address peculiar African problems. Issues pertaining to women and their rights have

gained prominence among the subjects that are usually broached by African writers. Rightly so,

because Africa’s culture which is largely patriarchal in nature makes women vulnerable and

susceptible to abuse in many spheres of their lives. Writers such as Ama Ata Aidoo, Buchi

Emecheta, Nawal El Saadawi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have tackled many issues about the

African woman ranging from cultural, domestic, economic to political issues, all with the aim of

giving voice to the African woman. One other issue that has gained currency in the works of

some West African writers is the issue of women trafficking.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2010) defines human trafficking to

include “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of

the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception,

of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of

payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person,

for the purpose of exploitation” (p.5). They further clarify that the exploitation encompasses

using the trafficked individuals for forced labour or sexual purposes. Although the problem of

women trafficking is prevalent in many African countries, the situation appears to be dire in

West Africa, especially in Nigeria and Ghana. According to the U.S. Department of State

Trafficking in Persons Report (2021), trafficked Nigerian women can be found in brothels

throughout Europe and they usually form the larger part of the percentage. A similar study which

was conducted by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) (2020) in Ghana states that

trafficking of women takes two forms: internally and externally. The destination of the external
trafficking is largely the Middle East, Europe as well as other parts of Africa. Interestingly, the

study established that Nigerians were the majority among the foreign nationals who have been

trafficked and forced into prostitution in Ghana. Some writers (Amma Darko, Chris Abani,

Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo) in the sub-region have sought to present the ordeal and trauma of

these trafficked women in the form of fictional narratives.

Until recently, narratives that deal with trauma about issues such as rape, incest, forced

prostitution, colonialism and its legacies were not deemed worthy for consideration under the

trauma theory. However, the contributions of scholars (Brown,1992; Craps, 2008; Rothberg,

2008; Visser, 2015) have justified the need to expand trauma theory to cater for these equally

important issues of trauma. Specifically, postcolonial trauma scholars have sought to create a

rapproachement between trauma theory and postcolonial studies to expand the theory and rid it

of its Eurocentric tendencies. That engagement has been going on for about two decades now

and as a result, various emendations have been made to the trauma theory to make it suitable for

the analysis of postcolonial traumas. Craps (2008) posits that the engagement should move from

the diagnostic phase where the emphasis have been on locating the pitfalls of the Eurocentric

conception of literary trauma to a prescriptive phase. The focus of the prescriptive phase should

be on studying and understanding different forms of trauma by paying attention to the history,

culture, language, beliefs and general understanding that a given people have about such traumas

in order to get a better appreciation of those traumas.

Many people consider the trafficking of women from Africa to Europe into forced

prostitution as a form of modern-day slavery. In spite of that awareness, discussions about the

problem are, mostly, done superficially limiting it to the isolated incidents that make it to the

limelight. The focus is usually on the individual cases neglecting the broader issue about how
Africa’s history of colonialism still impacts and sustains the issue. This research seeks to remedy

that problem by analysing three novels: Beyond the Horizon (1995), Becoming Abigail (2006)

and Trafficked (2008) by Amma Darko, Chris Abani and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo respectively

in terms of how they deal with the trauma of victims of forced prostitution both on the individual

level and how those traumas perpetuate the legacies of colonial traumas.

1.2 Statement of the Thesis

The quest to expand trauma theory to make it applicable in the analysis of postcolonial

trauma has been going on for some time now. A number of studies (Rothberg, 2008; Craps &

Buelens, 2008; Craps, 2012; Borzaga, 2012; Visser, 2015) have focused on introducing

emendations to the theory to make it more accommodating. Some of the studies also focused on

the narrative strategies that are used in the narration of postcolonial trauma narratives which

include: Martinez-Falquina, 2014, 2015; Rajiva, 2014; Peace; 2021). Studies on trauma in

African literature have largely focused on traumas relating to colonialism (Murphy, 2008; Cox,

2012), wars and other ethnic conflicts (Novak, 2008; Ouma, 2011; Craps, 2013; Adebayo, 2020),

domestic abuse (Aba-Sam & Saboro, forthcoming) with only few studies (Odinye, 2018;

Okpiliya & Archibong, 2021) dealing with the trauma that women who have been trafficked into

forced prostitution face. Odinye (2018) and Okpiliya & Archibong (2021) conducted separate

studies on two of the novels under study (Trafficked and Becoming Abigail respectively) and

they focused on the effects of the trauma of the victims.

A review of the studies on the three selected novels show that the studies conducted on

these books can be broadly classified into feminist reading (Frais, 2008, Asare-Kumi, 2010;

Ugwanyi, 2017: Nusukpo, 2019), the theme of trafficking and prostitution (Maccallum, 2015;
Afolayan, 2017; Amadi, 2019; Courtois, 2019; Asadu & Asadu, 2020; Ibanga, 2020) others

(Odamtten, 2007; Asempasah & Sam, 2016).

Two lacunas can be identified from the above review. First, the data show that the three

novels have not been studied together in spite of the similarities between the contexts and the

subject matter (the trauma associated with forced prostitution). Also, there has not been any

attempt to study the artistic strategies that help to define these novels as traumatic narratives.

This study, therefore, seeks to fill those two gaps to provide a fuller picture about the trauma that

women who have been forced into prostitution face. Also, by seeking to define these novels as

traumatic narratives, we would be able to establish the unique narrative strategies that have been

employed by the authors to present the trauma of the trafficked women. The present study,

therefore, seeks to provide a description of the traumatic novels on women trafficking in the

West African sub-region.

1.3 Research questions

The following questions will guide the research work:

1. What defining strategies have been used in the presentation of the trauma in the novels?

2. What is the nature of the trauma of the victims in the novels understudy?

1.4 Significance of the study

What is significant about this study is that it takes a pioneering step towards defining

these novels as traumatic narratives. The study will provide insight into one of the aspects of

postcolonial trauma (the trafficking of women to Europe) from the perspective of three writers in

Ghana and Nigeria which in turn will help further the discussion on the legitimacy and

uniqueness of postcolonial traumas within the main discussion of literary trauma. The study will
provide stakeholders who are dealing with issues about human trafficking within the sub-region

with a fuller and clearer representation of the issues about human trafficking. Lastly, it will give

literary critics a new perspective into the novels that deal with the subject of human trafficking

within the sub-region and perhaps open up new areas of research.

1.4 Delimitation of the study

The study is limited to writers from Ghana and Nigeria alone because it is the texts from

these two contexts that share a number of similarities making it possible for them to be studied

together. One of the factors is that the two countries: Ghana and Nigeria are all ex-British

colonies. The two countries also share some cultural and economic similarities. The three texts

have also been selected because of the similarities in the subject matter. I am aware that these

three texts may not be the only novels that touch on the subject of women being trafficked to

Europe. I, however, considered novels that deal with victims who have been forced or deceived

into prostitution alone. For instance, I excluded Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sister’s Street,

because unlike the texts understudy, the girls in On Black Sister’s Street voluntarily chose to be

trafficked to Belgium to go and work as prostitutes.

2.0 Literature review

2.1 Trauma theory

Caruth’s (1995) and (1996) influential publications Trauma: Explorations in Memory and

Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History respectively, are considered as major

landmarks publications in the development of literary trauma theory (Toremans, 2003). Caruth’s

ideas were largely based on her interpretation of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and

Moses and Monotheism. In this pioneering model, Caruth (1996) defined trauma as “the response

to an unexpected or overwhelming violent event or events that are not fully grasped as they

occur, but return later in repeated flashbacks, nightmares, and other repetitive phenomena”

(p.91). This understanding of trauma by Caruth is premised on two paradoxes: that “the most

direct seeing of a violent event may occur as an absolute inability to know it; that immediacy,

paradoxically, may take the form of belatedness” (p. 92). Thus, a traumatic experience is not

fully registered in the conscious mind at the time of occurrence. This is because the mind

recognizes the threat “one moment too late” (Caruth, 1996, p. 62). The experience is lodged in

the subconscious mind and comes back in a forceful manner, in fragmented forms, at different

places and times. These events are never known directly by the person and the dreams and

nightmares become a form of interrupted referentiality.

When they eventually re-surface in the form of dreams, hallucinations, intrusive thoughts

or nightmares, the person experiences them as if they were happening presently and not as past

experiences. It is this ability of an experience to resist time and place, present or past

demarcation but still continues to impact the identity of a person that makes it traumatic (Caruth,

1995).
Another interesting and important notion of trauma by Caruth is the fact that traumatic memory

is unspeakable. In other words, trauma does not lend itself to direct linguistic representation

(Caruth, 1996). This position is based on the work of psychiatrist, van der Kolk (1996) who has

argued that trauma elicits “speechless terror” as a universal neurobiological response to

experience which makes it difficult for such an event to be “organized on a linguistic level” (p.

172). The fact that trauma resists verbal or linguistic narration makes the causal link between

trauma and dissociation clearer. Generally, trauma from the Caruthian perspective is considered

as being unresolvable.

Paradoxically, the justification that is given for the representation of trauma in narrative

form is grounded in the notion of trauma being unknowable and unspeakable. The rationale is

that literature will help to reconstruct the traumatic memory which manifests in fragmented

forms through dreams and hallucinations. Tali (1996) also adds that “accurate representation of

trauma can never be achieved without recreating the event since, by its very definition, trauma

lies beyond the bounds of normal conception” (p.15). There is no contention about the literary

representation of trauma. There are however many contentions about the some of the tenets of

the theory and its general scope. Many scholars from areas such as postcolonial studies,

feminism and cultural studies have made very significant suggestions about some of the tenets of

the trauma theory and how the theory can be made inclusive. The next section of this review will

highlight some of those contributions.

2.2 Some emendations to the trauma theory

Since Caruth’s influential publications, the trauma theory has moved beyond the closed

psychoanalytic system with scholars revising many of the major formative ideas and also

combining other approaches with literary trauma analysis. This process has sometimes led to
contradictory positions (Balaev, 2014). Such revised approaches usually embrace a broader

framework by adding alternative approaches that can cater for the semiotic, rhetorical, social and

cultural aspects of trauma. This has resulted in what Baleav (2014) describes as ‘pluralistic

models’ of trauma. Scholars who revise the classical Freudian psychoanalytic approach to

trauma are not necessarily departing from it. They seek to broaden the scope of the theory or

challenge some of the initial notions in the theory. Because this study focuses on texts and forms

of trauma which depart in some ways from some of the notions of the classical trauma model, I

will review some of the concerns and emendations that revisionists of trauma theory have made

to the theory and how those ideas can help shape this research.

The first of such issues has to do with the classical trauma theory's adherence to an event-

based understanding of trauma. The Holocaust has for a long time been the reference point for

discussions in the trauma theory, partly, because the trauma theory itself originated in the context

of research about the Holocaust (Kaplan, 2005). It, therefore, had an impact on the definition and

understanding of what constitutes a legitimate traumatic event. For instance, one of the

parameters that was used for diagnosing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in The

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed. DSM-III, 1980) by the American

Psychiatric Association was that the trauma triggering event must be" outside the range of

human experience" (p.100). In many of the early accounts, trauma is described as resulting from

a "single, extraordinary, catastrophic event" (Craps, 2008: 31). One of the scholars that expressed

concern about this position is Laura Brown. Coming from a feminist perspective, Brown (1991)

in the paper Not outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma argued that the

understanding behind what is deemed as being “outside human experience" or “extraordinary”

only took into consideration the experiences of men of dominant class. Which means that the
daily domestic abuses that women suffer such as rape, incest, physical domestic aggression are

not considered as being trauma causing events although those events elicit symptoms of PTSD in

the victims. She extended this to include abuses like racial slurs that people from minority

groups face which are often neglected. It must be added that the later editions of Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual (DSM) have revised the definition of trauma to include many of the forms of

trauma that Brown talked about including vicarious trauma. Nonetheless, it was these concerns

that triggered the reaction of Brown (1991). She went ahead and built on the efforts of Maria

Root to promote the concept of insidious trauma which deals with "traumatogenic effects of

oppression that are not necessarily overtly violent or threatening to bodily well-being at the given

moment but that do violence to the soul and spirit" (Brown, 1991, p.107). Like the feminists,

postcolonial trauma scholars have also argued that the event-based model of psychic trauma is

too narrow and does not recognize some postcolonial traumas (Craps, 2008; Rothberg, 2008,

Visser, 2015). For example, the classic model of trauma does not account for racism which

although is historically specific, does not relate to a particular event in the past (Andermahr,

2015) and persists into the present. Also, understanding trauma as an event with a start and

definite end means that it cannot account for the traumas of colonialism which have persisted

even to today (Visser, 2015). These interventions have led to the recognition of different forms

of traumas like insidious traumas, transgenerational trauma and collective trauma as being

worthy of consideration under literary trauma studies.

Another notion of the classic trauma theory which scholars have tried to address borders

on Caruth's assertion that traumatic experience is unclaimed which makes trauma indeterminate

since the victim/survivor of the trauma lacks self-awareness about the traumatic situation

(Balaev, 2014). The problem about such a notion is that it prevents variability in relation to the
manifestation of trauma, limiting traumatic response to amnesia, dissociation, melancholia and

stasis. Scholars (Balaev, 2014; Vickroy, 2014) believe that such a stance narrows the

psychological dimensions of trauma because although they are part, amnesia, dissociation and

melancholia are not exclusive responses to psychological trauma. In fact, Konner (2007) makes a

categorical statement that “resilience and/or independent recovery are by far the most common

responses to potentially traumatic experiences” (p.320) contrary to what many literary trauma

studies wants us to believe. Studies that have paid attention to the specific social-cultural factors

of trauma have also confirmed that there can be different responses to psychological trauma

(Vickroy, 2014). Although the postcolonial trauma scholar, Visser (2015) agrees with Caruth

that a traumatic wounding is unknowable, she rejects the injunction that the defining, unalterable

and only form of response at the post traumatic stage is melancholia and fragility. She explains

that such a notion cannot be accepted in the analysis of some postcolonial traumas. The

aftermath of the analysis of a colonial trauma, for instance, cannot be only melancholia. It would

defeat the purpose of the text as a postcolonial narrative. The response from the analysis of

postcolonial traumas can include social "activism, recuperation, psychic resilience"

(Visser,2015:11) I must add that Pederson (2014) have argued for a complete rejection of

Caruth’s notion that traumatic wounding is unclaimed and indeterminate. He bases his argument

on the work of Harvard's Richard McNally, Remembering Trauma (2003), in which McNally

challenges some of the ideas of scholars like van der Kolk and Judith Herman whose works were

the foundation of Caruth's notion of the indeterminacy of trauma. Pederson states that "traumatic

amnesia is a myth" (p.334). Because this research seeks to describe the nature of the trauma in a

postcolonial text, it will adopt a pluralistic approach which means that it subscribes to the

position of Visser (2015) and Balleav (2014).

 The next problematic notion in the classic trauma theory is the tenet of the inaccessibility

or unspeakability of trauma. Unlike the other notions that have been discussed above, the issue

of unspeakability has two opposing positions in the classic model. Visser (2015) summarizes that

Caruth and Hartman represent the first position and they hold an aporetic view of trauma which

makes trauma increasingly indeterminate and impossible to narrate. The second position is

associated with Judith Herman who in her book Trauma and Recovery (1994) argues that

“narrative is a powerful and empowering therapeutic tool enabling integration of the traumatic

experience and aiding healing and recovery” (Visser, 2015, p. 274). Although the aporetic

dictum of Caruth appears to be the dominant of the two positions in literary trauma (Visser,

2015; Martinez-Falquina, 2015) new areas of interest such as postcolonial traumas find the

position of Herman more relatable. Unlike Caruth, Herman (1991) maintains that trauma can be

narrated as a “detailed verbal account oriented in time and historical content” (p.179). This

position resonates with scholars of postcolonial traumas because it allows for the study of

specific histories and cultures in contrast to Caruth's position which homogenizes and

dehistorises trauma (Visser, 2015). All these arguments will be tested in this study because the

focus of this thesis is to determine the nature of the trauma in the three novels and also show

whether they are any defining features about how the trauma in the respective texts are

presented. The next section will focus on some of the major arguments about the aesthetics of

trauma representation in relation to postcolonial trauma narratives.

2.3 Trauma fiction: Transmissibility, aesthetics and how it engages with the reader.

The broad and diverse ways in which trauma is defined make it difficult to also define

trauma fiction. However, the consensus appears to fall on two criteria: content and the aesthetics

of representation. The contentions about some of the tenets of trauma have trickled down into the
discussion about the trauma fiction and its representation. As is to be expected, most of the early

ideas about trauma fiction were heavily influenced by the Caruthian model of trauma. In her

book, Trauma Fiction (2001), Anne Whitehead uses the notions of the classic trauma model to

justify the characteristics she outlines for the trauma fiction. She states that Caruth's concepts of

unspeakability, belatedness and latency require that trauma fiction must "depart from

conventional linear sequence", "disjunction of temporality" (p.6) and have unresolvable endings.

There are also others whose perspectives about trauma fiction were heavily influenced by

Holocaust studies. According to Eaglestone, as has been summarized by Visser (2015),

“interruptions, compulsive repetition of telling and retelling, and various modes of disjunction,

as of style, tense and focalization” (p.276) are considered as requisite features of a trauma

narratives. On his part, Luckhurst (2008) states that the difficulty that comes with understanding

the Holocaust means that any other features apart from “disrupted, reiterated, recursive and non-

closured” (p.88-89) are requisite features of narratives about the Holocaust. Anything which will

not highlight the aporetic nature of the trauma will be inappropriate and an unethical means to

represent trauma.

Many of such formalist criteria about the Holocaust were derived from modernist and

postmodernist aspects. Craps and Buelens (2015) stated a similar criterion as a premise to the

Studies in the novel Project that “traumatic experiences can only be adequately represented

through the use of experimental, (post)modernist textual strategies' ' (p.5). Many of the

contributors to the project like (Miller, 2008) however, rejected this position on the basis that it

restricts what can be considered as trauma fiction. I cannot agree less with scholars like Miller

(2008) who have rejected these formalist criteria of defining trauma fiction because first, those

criteria would nullify the efforts that have been made to decolonize trauma theory and make it
accommodating for postcolonial traumas. For instance, scholars (Rothberg, 2008; Craps, 2008;

Pederson, 2014; Visser, 2015) have rejected the notions of trauma being unspeakable and

unclaimed. How do you then use such notions to set the criteria of what a trauma fiction should

be? The reason why such a thought was considered and seems possible is because most of the

emendations that have been discussed are limited to theoretical arguments. They do not reflect

well in the novels. Many of the authors of traumatic fictions (including many who wrote about

postcolonial traumas) were heavily influenced by some of these formalist criteria. They,

therefore, wrote their books to reflect the early dominant notions of trauma theory. The trauma

theory itself may have been expanded but a number of the novels still exhibit those restrictive

features of trauma. Such a situation can only be remedied if equal attention is paid to the works

of authors who have not tried to make their works conform to the modernists and formalists

criteria of how trauma novel should be written which is what this study seeks to do.

The second but no less relevant reason why a formalist criterion should be rejected is that

it stifles the creative and innovativeness of writers since they have to conform to some particular

criteria. Craps (2012) has argued that the trauma theory should be allowed to attend to the

"specific social and historical contexts in which trauma narratives are produced and received,

and be open and attentive to their diverse strategies of representation and the resistance which

these contexts invite or necessitate'' (p.43). This objective can only be fully realized if writers are

guided by the content and the goal they want to achieve with their work rather than writing to

suit a particular criterion. This research is borne out of this position to identify the unique

strategies that writers use to present issues of trauma from a descriptive perspective.

Equally important to this research is the concern about empathy and the transmissibility

of trauma between the reader and the trauma narrative especially in postcolonial trauma
narratives. Jo (2011) in his paper "The Ethics and Aesthetics of Representing Trauma"

questioned how “an approach which sees literature as a vehicle for healing can fully recognise

the political concerns of post-colonial writings'' (p.6). I must clarify that Jo’s contention here is

about the therapeutic impact of the text on the reader. Jo's stance is premised on the arguments of

two scholars (Vickory, 2002; Whitehead, 2004) that the reader in the course of testifying can

reconstruct the trauma of the victim leading to a collapse of the text/reader/therapist boundary. Jo

believes that such a situation can cause the reader to appropriate the trauma of the victim and

divert attention from the trauma of the victim to the reader. Although this is a legitimate concern,

it should not be seen as a weakness which should cause postcolonial studies to reject trauma

theory as Jo (2011) concluded. The issue about empathy and the transmissibility of trauma is

known to be a contentious subject which has already attracted some suggestions. I will discuss

LaCapra's concept of empathic unsettlement and how it seeks to remedy the contentions around

transmissibility of trauma and empathy.

Scholars agree that trauma narratives call for an ethical response from the reader. The problem,

however, bothers on the nature of the response. The concept of transmissibility was first

theorized by Felman and Laub in Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis

and History (1992). They described how trauma is empathetically transferred in the classroom or

therapy sessions when traumatic materials are encountered. The concept has since been

expanded to include every form of traumatic encounter (Visser, 2015). Scholars (Kaplan, 2005;

Crosthwaite, 2009; Whitehead, 2004; Vickroy, 2002) have argued that trauma can be transferred

to the reader or viewer either through reading or in popular media. However, Visser (2015)

argues that the concept has become too fuzzy and suggests that there needs to be a distinction

between primary trauma of actual victims and secondary or vicarious traumatization. Dominick
LaCapra has always been wary of this problem and sought to maintain that distinction through

the concept of empathic unsettlement.

LaCapra (2014) was responding to situations where traumatic witnessing causes readers

to have unchecked identification with the victims of trauma and thereby appropriating the trauma

for themselves. He argues that there must be desirable empathy which involves "not full

identification but what might be termed empathic unsettlement"(p.102). Secondary trauma may

be possible in the case of people who treat or deal directly with victims or survivors of trauma. It

will however be" hyperbolic" (p.102) for a person who reads a traumatic testimony or narrative

to claim to have been traumatized. LaCapra therefore maintains that the primary trauma in a

traumatic narrative should belong to the victims (characters). What the reader experiences is a

form of empathic understanding about the trauma of the character. Empathic unsettlement then

helps to preserve the trauma of the victim from "vicarious victimhood" (p.102) and unguarded

appropriation which can undermine the nature of the primary trauma.

We identify more with people whose situations are contiguous to ours so empathic

unsettlement provides barriers that can prevent the reader from overly identifying with the

traumas that we read about and may easily identify with. Writers adopt different strategies and

tools in trauma narratives to "undercut any uncritical sentimentality that readers may feel"

(Vickroy, 2014) towards a victim. A writer can reveal the flawed thinking of the victim, make

the victim unrelatable to the reader and other characters as a means of undercutting any

tendencies of vicarious victimhood (Vickroy, 2014). Eaglestone (2004) affirms Vickroy's

assertion that the strategies a writer adopts to undercut over-identification contributes to the

effectiveness of the text as a traumatic narrative. Regardless of the strategies a writer adopts and

how effective they write, there can be instances of what Eaglestone (2004) describes as "naive"
identification where the reader (maybe out of ignorance) fails to recognize these strategies and

over-identify or identify with the wrong character. Such situations are exceptions. LaCapra also

cautions that we must resist empathizing with perpetrators since it can "serve to validate or

justify certain acts" (p. 104). The above shows that the strategies that a writer adopts in

presenting a traumatic contributes a lot to the effectiveness of the text as a traumatic narrative

therefore an analysis about the representation of trauma should try to tease out those strategies as

well.

2.4 Empirical review

The review of previous studies is done in two broad categories. The first category focuses

on empirical studies that deal with strategies and ethics of representing trauma. Specifically, I

focus on studies that are on postcolonial trauma narratives and insidious trauma. The other

category deals with works on the three novels that have been selected for this study.

Martinez-Falquina (2014) and (2015 conducted two separate studies on the works of

Edwidge Danticat: The Dew Breaker and Claire of the Sea respectively. In both works, she

studied the narrative strategies that the author used in representing the trauma of the Haitian

people from a postcolonial trauma perspective. The first study established that the short story

structure reflects the diaspora reality of Haiti. She argues that the short story cycle allows for a

double reading of text: first, the short story form allows each of the voices to be heard separately

and avoid a "totalizing" or "redemptive kind of narrative" which might end up denying the

trauma. The other reading is that the subtle relations between the different stories resist the idea

that trauma is unspeakable or inaccessible. The second study also affirms that the author used the

short story cycle and other symbols to represent the unique nature of the trauma of the Haitian

trauma thereby resisting appropriation. What is interesting about Martinez-Falquina's analysis is

that she explained what one can describe as typical features of Caruthian trauma from a

completely different point of view using the context and features of the texts. Normally, critics

interpret fragmentation in narration to reflect the notion of unspeakability of the trauma.

However, Martinez-Falquina argues that the author used that to avoid linear narration not to

show fragmentation but to ensure that each and every voice in the narration is vindicated. What

this means is that the features which have even been accepted as the typical features of Caruthian

trauma can be deployed in different ways by an author to achieve different effects.

Rajiva (2014) also analysed the representation of trauma in postcolonial fiction by

studying some novels from South Africa, India and Sri Lanka. His study focused on the

engagement that readers have with text. He argues that our encounter with text is a tactile one

which is predicated on literal seeing. The shape of narratives creates postcolonial texts as bodies

and those bodies display unique ways of representation. He concludes that postcolonial trauma

narratives can employ strategies of representation which may not even fall within the trauma

theory. Rajiva's study also supports the claim that we should not be talking about homogenized

strategies of representing trauma because postcolonial trauma narratives adopt different

strategies. I must, however, state that Rajiva's claims appear to have been overstressed because it

is hard to tell whether his findings can be applicable to other postcolonial texts.

A recent study by Prace (2021) focused on the trauma experience and the narrative

strategies in three novels of Toni Morrison. She argues that Morrison combined Western oriented

literary traditions with traditional African storytelling to present the trauma caused by slavery

which still persist in the form of racism and discrimination in America today. Prace adds that the

author used Western strategies like multiplicity of voices, non-linear fragmented narrative,

retrospection, and repetition to contribute to the oral storytelling form of the novel and to
improve the oral quality of the text. This observation confirms the earlier observation from the

work of Martinez-Falquina (2014) and (2015) that even when a writer adopts Western oriented

strategies in their narration, they can be deployed to have localised functions within the work.

The novels that have been selected for this study have received some amount of critical

engagements. Many of the studies on Beyond the Horizon focus on trafficking. Frias (2008)

highlights how the women who were trafficked into prostitution took charge of their lives by

choosing to remain in prostitution as an act of defiance and for financial independence. Asare-

Kumi (2010) and Nutsupko (2019) also discussed the novel from a feminist point of view. They

explored the various ways by which the text highlights the subjugation and exploitation of

women which includes socio-cultural, economic and sexual. Ugyanyi’s, (2017) study is almost a

contrast to Nusukpo (2019) because Ugwanyi highlights how female writers like Darko sideline

the men in their texts and subjects them to constant bashing just to push the agenda about their

female characters. Asempasah and Sam (2016) discussed how the name ‘Mara’ demonstrates

agency and how the main character uses the name to reconstitute her subjectivity. Odamtten

(2007) on the other hand studied the novel as a coming-of-age novel.

One Abani’s Becoming Abigail, a lot of the discussion focused on the issue of trafficking.

Scholars (Chasen, 2010; Dawson, 2010; Maccallum, 2015; Courtois, 2019) have all tackled the

issue of trafficking in the novel from different angles. Chasen (2010) analysed how postcolonial

cultural conditions contribute to trafficking of women in Africa and how trafficked women use

their bodies as a means of resistance. Dawson and Maccallum looked at trafficking and the

complexities about agency. The studies challenge our view that trafficked people are passive

victims which, they believe, is a sign that we are not paying attention to the lived experiences of

others. Courtois (2019) sought to subvert the discussion on the passive nature of trafficked
women. He argues from the text that such women usually adopt different agencies to respond to

their situation. Immaculata (2018) undertook a postcolonial study of the novel by looking at how

identities are constructed with the concept of performativity.

Like the first two novels, majority of the critical attention on Akachi Adimora- Ezeigbo’s

Trafficked have focused on the theme of trafficking and prostitution. (See Nder, 2013; Afolayan,

2017; Amadi, 2019; Asadu & Asadu, 2020; Ibanga, 2020). The studies focus on issues such as

the causes, contributory factors, prevention and the type of support that can be given to the

victims of trafficking. Olaniyan (2014) also discussed the issue of corruption and how academics

in Nigeria engage in corrupt practices on university campuses. Emmanuel (2018) also discussed

Trafficked as a postcolonial text.

The two works that are related to the present study were conducted by Odinye (2018) and

Opkiliya and Archibong (2021). Odinye’s (2018) focused on the trauma of the victims of human

trafficking. The study argues that the experiences of human trafficking and the stereotypical

attitude of people towards the victims have a negative impact on the psychological and emotional

well-being of the victims. The other study by Opkiliya and Archibong (2021) used the trauma

theory to analyse how the manipulation of symbols, occasion and character are used by Abani to

present the pain of the characters in Becoming Abigail. Odinye (2018) and Opkiliya and

Archibong (2021) have shed some light on the issues of trauma in Trafficked and Becoming

Abigail, but their studied are limited to the effects of trauma on the victims and the manifestation

of trauma. The present study seeks to offer a more comprehensive study of the nature of trauma

in the three selected novels and also outline the defining characteristics about the novels as

postcolonial trauma narratives.

3.0 Methodology

This work is a qualitative research which will adopt a textual analysis approach. This

approach will suit the work because this project seeks to offer an interpretive and a descriptive

analysis of three novels to determine how they can be defined as postcolonial traumatic

narratives. Qualitative research has similar end goals as it deals with the way people make sense

of their own concrete real-life experiences in their own world. The content analysis will also be

suitable as it denotes a research method for the subjective interpretation of content of text data

through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes and patterns

(Hsieh & Shannon, 2005).

The analysis will be guided by a close reading of the texts under consideration. To

answer research question one, each of the three texts will be analysed to show the nature of the

trauma of the three protagonists and how they respond to their traumas. The discussion here will

be guided by the trauma theory and the emendations that have been made to it by postcolonial

trauma scholars. With the second research question, I will look at the strategies that have been

adopted by the three writers in presenting the trauma of the victims with the hope of establishing

common defining features about the three novels as postcolonial traumatic narratives on

trafficking. This level will be guided by LaCapra’s concept of empathic unsettlement.

3.2 Justification for the choice of texts

The three texts: Beyond the Horizon, Becoming Abigail and Trafficked were selected

primarily because they all deal with trauma related to women who are trafficked into forced

prostitution. Also, the selection of the texts is influenced by the fact that they are all written by

authors from Anglophone West Africa. Out of the six Anglophone countries in West Africa, I
selected the texts from Ghana and Nigeria because of the cultural, social and economic affinities

between the two countries. I chose only one novel from Ghana because as far as I am aware, it is

the only novel that deals with trafficking of women from Ghana to Europe. The similarities

between the backgrounds and the subject matter of the texts make it appropriate for them to be

discussed together, to see the commonalities and differences that they exhibit as postcolonial

traumatic narratives.

3.1 Summary of Text

The primary data for the research comprise three novels: Amma Darko’s Beyond the

Horizon, (1995) Chris Abani’s Becoming Abigail (2006) and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s

Trafficked (2008).

Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon tells the story of Mara, an innocent and ignorant village girl

who is given in marriage to Akobi, the only person from the village residing in the city. Akobi

subjects Mara to different forms of abuses: marital rape, physical assault and emotional abuse

before hatching up a plan to get her to join him in Germany. In Germany, Akobi blackmails

Mara into forced prostitution, after drugging her and filming her being gang raped. Eventually,

Mara, with the help of Kaye, extricates herself from the control of Akobi and becomes

independent. She, however, remains in Germany and continues to work as a prostitute because

she is still afraid that the tape Akobi recorded may pop up in her village one day.

Becoming Abigail by Chris Abani was also published in 2006. The novella centres around

Abigail, the eponymous character, whose mother died while giving birth to her. She lives a

painful and traumatic life with her father who blames her for the death of his wife. Aside from

having to deal with the loss of her mother and her father blaming her for it, Abigail is raped
twice, all before she turns twelve. Peter, one of her rapists, manages to convince Abigail’s father

to allow him to take Abigail to London to continue her education. In London, Peter tries to put

little Abigail into prostitution. He chains Abigail to a dog house rapes and beats her consistently

when Abigail refuses to have sex with a client. In one of the attempts to rape her, Abigail bites

off Peter’s penis and escapes into the streets of London, still holding the remains of the penis.

Derek, the social worker in whose care she is placed, enters into a relationship with fourteen year

old Abigail. When Derek is arrested after his wife caught him and Abigail having sex, Abigail

drowns herself in the river Thames.

Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo’s Trafficked also revolves around a young woman named

Nneoma. She runs from home and links up with a friend who says she can get her a teaching

appointment in London. Nneoma joins a group of six girls who are made to swear with the Bible

that they will work, as long as possible, for the people who have paid their travelling expenses to

defray the cost. Instead of the agreed destination (London), Nneoma and her friends are rather

sent to Italy, where they are forced into prostitution. Nneoma is then sold to another pimp who

sends her to London to continue with the prostitution. After managing to run away from her

capturers, the police arrest her and deports her to Nigeria. An NGO, OASIS International takes

Nneoma and other fourteen girls in and takes them through many rehabilitation exercises to re-

integrate them into the Nigerian society. All the three texts focus on how women are deceived

and trafficked from West Africa to Europe and forced into prostitution and the resultant trauma

that they usually go through.

4.0 Sample Analysis

4.1 Defining strategies of how the authors present the narratives as traumatic narratives
The sample analysis below seeks to answer research question one.

First, all the three novels use the bildungsroman approach in presenting the trauma of the

victims. As has been established by Swales (2015), bildungsroman is “any novel having one

central figure whose experiences and whose changing self, occupy a role of structural primacy

within the fiction” (p.56). There can be many variations to the form of bildungsroman, but one

common feature is that a character begins in innocence or immaturity and goes through some

challenges in the course of the novel to achieve enlightenment or maturity. I argue that the

adoption of this format is one of the strategies that Amma Darko, Chris Abani and Akachi

Adimora Ezeibgo use to frame their novels: Beyond the Horizon, Becoming Abigail and

Trafficked as traumatic fictions.

In Beyond the Horizon, Darko casts Mara as a very naive person which earns her the

name “Greenhorn” from Mama Kiosk. This naivety causes her to think that the inhumane

treatment that her husband is subjecting her to is acceptable. She endures all forms of

humiliation: physical, emotional and psychological, in the hands of her husband. Mara is ready

to do anything to please Akobi. As a dutiful wife that she is, she agrees to join her husband in

Germany and it is only when she is drugged and blackmailed into becoming a prostitute that she

sees Akobi for the heartless and betraying husband that he is. This type of development makes

the final predicament of Mara seem unfortunate and undeserving. The reader is able to develop

some empathy for Mara because of the shocking manner through which she lost her innocence.

Similarly, Chris Abani's Becoming Abigail is a bildungsroman which traces the growth and

development of the eponymous character right from childhood to her early teenage years. Abani

presents Abigail as a young girl who acts and behaves beyond her age. After having to endure

the trauma of growing up without a mother in the presence of a father who blames her for the
death of his wife (Abigail’s mother), Abigail is raped at age ten and is also deceived by her

cousin, Peter and trafficked to London where she is subjected to rape and other forms of

violence. This sequencing of events makes the reader develop some fellow-feeling towards

Abigail and the predicaments that a girl of her age had to endure.

The bildungsroman narrative is also deployed by Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo in Trafficked.

Like the other two characters, the novel focuses on the development of Nneoma right from the

beginning where she easily falls prey to the ploys of traffickers to her life in captivity in Italy and

London back to Nigeria. The effectiveness that Adimora-Ezeigbo achieves in communicating the

trauma of the forced prostitution that Nneoma suffers in Italy and London is not only about the

harrowing nature of the rape and the physical abuse that she is subjected to. The author exploits

the immature background of the character to elicit some sympathy in the reader towards the

character. Nneoma is presented as a young girl from a respectable family. She has finished her

training and has qualified to be a teacher. She is engaged to Ofomata, a young man who can be

described as a man of every girl’s dream in the community. For a such a girl to be deceived and

forced into prostitution makes her situation the more traumatic. The author uses this

bildungsroman technique as a build up to make the reader appreciate the nature of the trauma

that the victim suffers.

By using the bildungsroman approach in the novels, the writers: Amma Darko, Chris

Abani and Akachi Adimora Ezeibgo, successfully inject their characters with some amount of

likeability. The reader understands the vulnerability of the characters which in turn reinforces the

empathic feeling that the reader will have for the them. That said, the same bildungsroman

approach provides a window for the writers to expose the somewhat complicated and
problematic sides of their trauma victims to undercut any tendency of readers becoming overly

sympathetic with the victims of the trauma.

The realisation of the above is grounded in the fact that a character in the bildungsroman

novel is usually required to undergo a developmental process where the character develops an

awareness about him/herself or overcomes a weakness to be able to fully develop that self-

consciousness. In Beyond the Horizon, the main obstacle to Mara’s development of ultimate self-

consciousness is her extreme naivety. At the initial stages of the novel, the reader is able to

understand why Mara endures all that abuse from Akobi. After all, she is a ‘Greenhorn’ or a

“Johnnie-just-come” from the village who is ignorant about many things in life including her

own biology. She says that “many of the things that happened in my marriage appeared to me to

be matter-of-course things that happened in all marriages and to all wives” (p.12). However,

after being in the city for a while and experiencing the full complement of Akobi’s horrendous

personality and also getting all the needed catalytic insights from Mama Kiosk, one would have

expected that Mara would come to her senses and extricate herself from Akobi’s abusive

bondage. On the contrary, she rather joins Akobi in Germany against Mama Kiosk's advice, only

to be forced into prostitution. This position is in tandem with Asempasah and Sam’s (2016)

argument that Mara’s naiveness and her quest to satisfy her fantasy about Europe make her

complicit in the fate that befalls her in the novel. In this paper, I argue that the naivety that Mara

demonstrates becomes a form of complication to her character and acts as a check towards the

way readers would empathise with the physical, emotional and psychological trauma that she

experiences in the novel which in the end will help the reader to achieve empathic unsettlement.

In Becoming Abigail, what the writer uses to check the relatability between the reader and

Abigail is by giving Abigail an unemotional and a resilient attitude that a child of her age should
not have had. Abani’s portrayal of the eponymous character as an emotionally precocious child

is a technique that the writer uses to check any emotional excesses that the reader might have

towards Abigail. It is obvious that the death of Abigail’s mother during birth coupled with her

father’s endless mourning and blaming attitude towards Abigail puts the little girl into some

amount of trauma. In spite of having to deal with these traumatizing experiences, Abigail is

presented as an emotionally resilient person who is able to deal with her situation in a far more

mature way than one would have expected. Between Abigail and her father, the little girl is

portrayed as being more emotionally stable and becomes a ‘father’ to her father. She takes care

of her father whenever he gets drunk and falls into one of his fits of mourning. She is so

emotionally unresponsive that she does not even react when her cousin Peter molests her on his

wedding day in a washroom.

Peter had cornered her in the bathroom. She didn’t shrink away like other girls her age
might have at being surprised in the bathroom with her underwear halfway down her legs
and the skirt of her dress gathered in a bunch as she squatted over the hole…. She just
held her dress up and peed, not taking her eyes off his. Surprised at her fearlessness he
kissed her, his finger exploring her (Then XI, p.31)
Admittedly, one can argue that Abigail, being emotionally unresponsive is a symptom of the

trauma she experiences at the early stage of her life. That such a state may be a means of

adapting to her traumatic situation is undoubtable. However, the argument I advance in this

section is that Abigail’s emotionally unresponsive outlook reduces the amount of sympathy that

one is likely to have for her character. With this approach, the writer manages to condition the

reader to develop a restrained attitude about how they feel about the traumatic situation of the

character. Abigail not showing any showing any outward reaction about Peter’s molestation and

her father’s death, causes the reader to begin to feel that Abigail would be able to withstand

anything. The effectiveness of such a conditioning is that it makes the reader understand the
emotional pain that the rape and physical violence that Peter meted out to Abigail in London had

on her because if the emotionally opaque Abigail who has been able to withstand many traumatic

events in her life can be broken by the impact of such abuses, then one can understand the

enormity of what Peter put her through. According to Vickroy (2014) the ability of a traumatic

text to exude sympathy in the reader and at the same time reveal "the flawed thinking, feeling

and behaviour of the traumatised individual" (p.138) is one of the things that makes a text an

effective traumatic text.

Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo also uses the characterisation of Nneoma to put some restraints

on the amount of sympathy that the reader may develop for her. First, the author holds back from

giving any meaningful reason why Nneoma runs from home. She only states that the reason is

personal. This casts Nneoma as somebody who does not appreciate what she has. Aside from

that, one would expect Nneoma to be aware of the activities of traffickers and the tricks that they

use in luring potential victims because of her educational background. For Nneoma, her main

weakness is the lack of carefulness and wrong sense of judgement. Given her educational

background and the kind of life she had, it makes her situation looks that she brought what what

happened to her on herself. This strategy helps to check any form of over-identification with the

victim (Nneoma) of the trauma.

5.0 RESEARCH SCHEDULE AND BUDGET

1. Schedule

Task Start Date Target Date

Revision of Research scope after proposal 15th March, 2022 30th March, 2022

defence.

Obtain literature 15th March, 2022 31st March, 2022

Writing the Introduction 1st April, 2022 15th April, 2022

Supervisor-Supervisee interaction & progress 16th April, 2022 17th April, 2022

report.

Literature Review 1st May, 2022 30th May, 2022

Revision of chapter one 1st June, 2022 1oth June, 2022

Supervisor-Supervisee Interaction 15th June, 2022 16th June, 2022

Methodology and Analysis 1st July, 2022 30th July 2022

Revision of Chapter 2 1st August, 2022 15th August, 2022

Supervisor-Supervisee Interaction 17th August, 2022 18th August, 2022

Chapter five 2oth August, 2022 30th August, 2022

Revision of Chapters 3&4 1st September, 2022 30th September, 2022

Supervisor-Supervisee Interaction 15th October, 2022 16th October, 2022

Submit first draft 2oth October, 2022

Submit revised draft 30th October, 2022

2. Budget

Item/Services Estimated Amount ȼ Justification

Journal Articles/Books 300 Purchasing of articles and/or

books for research

Travel and meetings 800 Frequent meetings with my

Supervisors

Equipment
Printer and stationery 600 Purchasing of a printer to enable

frequent submission of drafts.

Modem 100 To enable me access articles

when not on campus

 School fees

3898

Total Budget 6389

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