An Original Framework for the Study of Trauma and Testimony in Nigerian Post-Civil War Literature

Nigerian literature produced in the aftermath of the Biafran Civil War (1967 to 1970) and the subsequent cultural and psychological processing of that event represents one of the most important bodies of trauma literature in postcolonial African literary history, yet its engagement with global trauma theory remains theoretically underdeveloped. This study developed an original theoretical framework for the study of trauma and testimony in Nigerian post-civil war literature, bringing trauma theory into productive dialogue with postcolonial literary criticism and Igbo cultural approaches to grief and memory. A theory-building methodology was employed, drawing on trauma theory (Caruth, LaCapra, Hirsch), postcolonial memory studies (Halbwachs, Nora), Igbo cultural scholarship on grief ritual and historical memory, and primary textual analysis of 22 Nigerian literary works addressing the Civil War, including novels, poetry, and memoir from the South East, South West, and South South zones. The theoretical analysis identified a fundamental limitation in existing trauma theory's individualism, which inadequately accounts for communal trauma processing in African cultural contexts. The original Communal Trauma Testimony Framework proposes four theoretical dimensions specific to Nigerian civil war literature: collective witness (the text as a community rather than individual act of testimony), intergenerational transmission (how trauma is passed through narrative to those who did not experience it directly), cultural ritual as literary form (how Igbo mourning and healing rituals are structurally transformed in literary texts), and postcolonial silence (how political and ethnic silencing of Biafra memory shapes the formal features of literary testimony).