Critical Psychology in Africa (Paperback)

Contributors explore some of the experiences of trauma of people living in various parts of the African continent, where lives are irrevocably altered by the presence of wars, violence, crime, poverty, political instability and widespread chronic illness. They all begin from the premise that colonialism has had an inestimable impact on the lives and experiences of the people living here. A sense of 'African identity' has long been eroded, reworked and redefined by a flux of politics and developments from outside the continent. Thus in any reworking of African concerns there needs to be an awareness that, even when thinking from within a critical framework, it is difficult avoid participation in the cultural imperialism implicit in the processes of globalisation. Furthermore, the available dominant representations and discourses for the elucidation of the experience of trauma are vastly inadequate, so that it is a daunting task to try to make sense of what often seem to be meaningless acts of violence. Contributors discuss women's experiences of rape in Rwanda; the management of teenage pregnancy and reproduction in South Africa; the lives of women forcibly displaced from the Great Lakes region; the experience of political violence and torture in Zimbabwe; white masculinity in South Africa; and the trauma and grief faced by children living in conditions of poverty and violence in Cape Town.