Colonial cultural trauma can block intellectual work until a postcolonial space opens

Evidence

In response, Stuart explains that this was not only because of his earlier decision not to return after Oxford but because, psychically, he continued to feel “blocked” by the cultural trauma he experienced as part of his Jamaican upbringing, which had made him feel he had to leave—and, indeed, to then stay away. As he explains, it was not until the 1970s, when Jamaica was beginning to recognize itself as a black society, speaking patois and listening to reggae, under the Africanizing influence of Rastafarianism, that he felt that there was a space there in which he could begin to work. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 29

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with Fanon’s colonial psychology — the internalized block of the colonized subject — which later Islamophobia readings will lean on for the psychology of the racialized subject.
• QUESTION: The mechanism of cultural trauma producing a psychic ‘block’ is asserted but not theorized here — worth chasing in Hall’s own essays on cultural identity.