Dismantling the Trauma Paradigm in Helon Habila’s Measuring Time

Abstract

The paper argues that Helon Habila’s Measuring Time is a narrative that significantly explores the traumatogenic experiences in the lives of the characters. The article explores the recollected theories   of trauma on the individual psyche, and its effects on memory, especially its representation in the narrative. The argument centres on the temporality of traumatogenic events upon identity and its effects upon the individual’s memory, and its actuality in Habila’s narrative. It argues that the narrative traces Mamo’s repeated, conscious or unconscious representation and enactment of their father’s failure to show love to his family and abandonment, starting from their mother, Tabita, and his attempts to understand his father’s actions from his own and his brother, LaMamo’s positions as subjects affected by their father’s abandonment and emotional neglect. The aim of the paper is to apply a Caruthian analysis and interpretation of the text to posit that Mamo’s and LaMamo’s hatred of their father, Lamang is the result of Auntie Marina’s unconscious recollected tales of their father’s abandonment of their mother, Tabita, which forms the twin’s experiences of their mother in marriage and in turn constitutes their traumatogenic experiences and fuels their desire to achieve authenticity or fame as an act of dismantling their traumatic experiences in the narrative.  The paper argues for a re-modeling of the complications inherent in the ways traumatic experiences might be analyzed, interpreted or narrated.  The major contribution of this work is the observation that diverse trauma theories are merged in the narrative; Freudian, Taian, Brownian and Caruthian “traumatogenic experiences” are resonances which permeate the narrative texture of Habila’s narrative. Few scholars have dwelt on the traumatogenic experiences of dysfunctional parenting and dysfunctional partnership in marriage in this narrative. This observation makes the present study expedient.