Diffusing the landmines of the past

Most trauma is a manifestation of racist-patriarchal-casteist conditioning. It is oppressive because it is rooted in joylessness, inequality, in the continuing subjugation of those rendered powerless. Representation pic/Getty Images

Bozen/Bolzano, the city closest to me, looks like South Mumbai on my last visit early last year, mostly dug up and under construction. It is not a metro but a mall and some other gratuitous structures that are being built. Since there's so much excavation in order to build foundations, ever so often a bomb from World War II is discovered. An elaborate routine is then enforced by which people in surrounding areas must temporarily be evacuated and a squad is brought in to remove the bomb and take it someplace where it can be diffused, if it is still live. It is a periodic reminder of the violent past.

The bomb is also a metaphor for the nature of patriarchal forms of conflict that have historically failed, like war. When can a war be said to have ended? The recurrence of these bombs tells me that long after the peace treaties are signed, the traces of war still remain, except we mostly repress it into the underground domains of our own consciousness and hope against hope that it won't implode.

I've been wondering if this state of precariousness, this living with impending combustibility is what it means to be triggered by things or events or situations. It's a word that has become part of our every day discursive vocabulary. Spoiler warnings have been replaced by trigger cautions. I have a difficult relationship with the word. On the one hand, it recognises and testifies to the violence inherent to the act of living with forms of trauma.

Most trauma is a manifestation of racist-patriarchal-casteist conditioning. It is oppressive because it is rooted in joylessness, inequality, in the continuing subjugation of those rendered powerless. The nexus between racism, patriarchy, caste, and capitalism ensures that we even profit from other's misery and suffering. Those of us who use feminist strategies alongside therapy to navigate our way out of this morass of toxic relationships have often to contend with the oppression inflicted upon us. In the case of race or caste - this trauma feels intergenerational and inherited.

As one begins to excavate the past, one finds oneself constantly retrieving land mines. They assume different forms. Sometimes a land mine feels like the mineralised sedimentations of long-term violations; sometimes it looks like a crystallised accumulation that bears the weight of all the shame and self-neglect of childhood or adolescence; sometimes it appears like a cannon-ball-sized manifestation of all the things that were done to us without our explicit or enthusiastic consent which we internalised as our fault, our burden, as if we deserved it; and this destructive intangible object is always accompanied by the shadow of contrition composed of all the many, many, many things that happened to us for which we haven't forgiven ourselves.

Sometimes I wonder if self-forgiveness is in fact the only way to diffuse these wayside weapons of self-destruction. There are deep discursive fissures in the way the word forgiveness is bandied about. Growing up Catholic, it was a word I myself had to repeat daily when I recited the ‘Lord's prayer'. There's a line in there that asks the divine entity to ‘forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sinned against us'. As I grew into feminism, I began to see how this crucial invocation blind-sided me about the inherent agency incumbent in the art of forgiveness.

Religion externalises the forgiving power, making it either tangible or intangible... you have to appeal to something outside of yourself, god, or a river's water, in order to be cleansed of a sin. But there was never any focus on all the blame we were made to internalise, how even our oppression was institutionally validated as being our fault for having been born a certain colour, or into a certain caste or sex.

I arrived at a most unforgettable breakthrough moment in therapy when once, in the midst of a triggered breakdown, I reframed a question I had been subconsciously asking. ‘I want to understand my complicity in my past oppression'. I surprised myself with this articulation which immediately affected a narrative shift. It meant I stopped seeing myself as a passive entity but as someone who had been conditioned to serve as a good subject. My docility, politeness, inability to stand up for myself... all these qualities had been bred into me, they weren't values that I inherently embodied. They had emerged from the insecurities caused by rejection, humiliation, shame, and an inability to ‘hold' my self.

I realised also that my ability to look away or become a bystander in situations where I was the one being oppressed was also a coping mechanism. Unfortunately, it only furthered the schism I had forged between emotion and thought, divorcing the two so I could successfully intellectualise my feelings instead of confronting their messiness.

Yesterday was a day that marked the remembrance of the horror of Holocaust. I recognised a few words from the German news I was watching. ‘Against forgetting', the reporter reiterated. I think true forgiveness, too, means not forgetting. Remembering the circumstances that contributed to the reprehensible act that was committed either by you or against you. I think there is immense virtue in learning how to hold ourselves accountable in order to move closer to joy.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.