Cultural Wounding

Abstract

In this chapter, I introduce the term “cultural wounding.” Having presented ethnicity as a deeply subjective, emotionally powerful loyalty, drawn from complicated relationships to ancestry as well as the current conditions that affect people’s participation in social worlds, our attention is now focused on the temporal episodes that punctuate the journey from ancestry to the present. Throughout this chapter, my analysis of cultural wounding and the impact it has on ethnic identities is rooted in the voices of historically and structurally oppressed peoples. It is intricately tied to community struggles and is oriented toward an overarching goal of societal transformation and survival. In discussing the moments between ancestry and present, I turn to the experiences of the oppressed, for whom these episodes are disproportionately marked by instances of cultural wounding and struggle.