Tracing Trauma Through Soil,Medicine and Rubble: Stories of the al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Factory

This article develops a posthumanist understanding of trauma that considers the role of non-human agency in the performance of the traumatic. Reviewing the psychoanalytical and sociological literature on trauma, we find that existing conceptualisations do not sufficiently allow for such considerations. In response, we reconceptualise trauma as a performative effect of the traces that violence leaves behind in the becoming of the world and illustrate the value of our approach by engaging with the 1998 US bombing of the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory. Through storytelling, we show how soil played an important role in sustaining a sanitised narrative of the bombing and how this narrative is contested by the traces of violence that entangle the strike with starvation, medicine shortages and emotional despair. We argue that a posthumanist understanding of trauma adds to the literature by making material woundings, such as the bombing of the al-Shifa factory, intelligible as traumatic and enabling one to probe the role of both human and non-human agency in governing trauma. This article contributes to debates on trauma in International Relations by explicating the anthropocentric underpinnings of contemporary trauma theory, the limitations thereof, and how these limitations may be overcome through a posthumanist approach.