Intergenerational trauma and complex implication in Maaza Mengiste's The Shadow King (2019)

Bibliographic Data

ID2179796
AuthorsNoreen Kane (0000-0003-3975-5825)
Year2025
Volume61
Issue1
Pages96-109
Publication date2025-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17449855.2024.2384916
OpenAlexW4401683313
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited18

In the last three decades, numerous literary works have been published by women writers with origins in Italy's former colonies in the Horn of Africa. These narratives have helped to create a belated form of postcolonial consciousness in Italy. Ethiopian American writer Maaza Mengiste adds to this body of work with her Booker longlisted novel, The Shadow King, which depicts the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935–41). This article analyses her text through the lens of intergenerational trauma theory. It applies Michael Rothberg's notion of "complex implication", referring to how an inheritance of victimhood may coexist with a position of implication, and Mihaela Mihai's concept of "impure resistance", which allows space for the ambivalence that may be implicit in resistance. It thus explores Mengiste's portrayal of the enduring – and often unconscious – legacy of past trauma on the present and examines how subject positions such as "victim" and "perpetrator" fluctuate over generations

Psychoanalysis · Shadow (psychology · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Middle East Politics and Society · Psychology · Turkey's Politics and Society · History

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