Representing Pain: Refugee Bodies as Sites of Trauma

Abstract

The impact of trauma on the bodies and psychology of refugees is long-lasting; their bodies become emblematic of the sort of ‘control’, ‘management’, and ‘disciplining’ they undergo. And, when human bodies are trapped in a condition of immense physical and mental violence, such a scale of violence is counterproductive to any healthy way of living. This vicious atmosphere gives rise to human beings with traumatized psyches and survival-phobias. This research paper, in the form of an image essay, studies the refugee condition; it attempts to study the trauma of detainees in Manus and Nauru islands[i] in the Pacific region of Australia, and also looks into the traumatic condition of the Rohingya refugees living in some refugee camps in Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir. The asylum seekers in the Australian islands are mostly Muslims, which includes Kurds, Turks, Syrians, and Rohingyas. The paper begins with defining the term “refugee” etymologically and representing the refugee as a mobile site/body of pain and trauma. To define the term “refugee”, this paper also includes the ideas of Giorgio Agamben who problematises the existence of a refugee-body as “bare life”. Taking cue from the theoretical insights of Elaine Scarry’s Body in Pain, this paper points towards the nature of pain as being a feeling that fractures language. Alongside highlighting that language as a medium fails to express and represent trauma/pain of refugees in its entirety, the main focus of this paper is to bring to limelight the fact that a refugee body is a site/carrier of trauma and pain. And, such pain/trauma is not fully expressed by the language in which they express and talk about this trauma to the outside world and their pain/trauma is not wholly represented by theoretical interventions. The essay attempts to put this argument by reading some pictures and interviews of refugees in the light of various refugee theories. Employing some refugee theories like Kunz’s Kinetic Model of Refugee Theory, Mollica’s Trauma Theory, Burstow’s Feminist Trauma Theory, the paper attempts to represent them as “bodies in pain”, and as ‘sites’ which are not able to express/represent/mediate their pain/trauma in its entirety.

[i] Nauru is an island republic in the South Pacific. It is 4, 000 Kilometres away from Sydney. It was first used by Australia as a place of detention from late 2001, after the Tampa episode, until 2007. It was again reused in 2012 as a place/camp where families and unaccompanied women and children refugees are sent. The Manus island is a place of detention for unaccompanied men refugees.