The traumatized as traumatizer in Yussef El Guindi's back of the throat

Abstract EN

Drawing on a psychoanalytic approach, the present paper tackles Yussef El Guindi's Back of the Throat (2006) as a study of the American attitude towards Arab/Muslim Americans after the 9/11 attacks, with a special focus on the traumatic effects arising from police interrogations throughout the play.

This will be done by employing such features as fear, verbal and physical attacks, inhuman practices, cynicism, scapegoating, etc.

as negotiated by psychoanalysts like Allan Young, Philip Bonifacio, Marna Young and others.

In a seven-character full-length one-act piece, El Guindi illustrates how the police officers, traumatized by the acute 9/11 attacks, pass on their own trauma to innocent people on fabricated evidence that they may appear as more sinned against than sinning.

The paper has reached three findings.

(1) The playwright fulfilled his target of showing the American traumatization of Arab/Muslim Americans as due to the West's old view of the latter as inferior and uncivilized.

(2) Trauma survivors (the police officers) usually have to pass their trauma on to their victims (by means of cynical inhuman practices).

(3) The acute trauma changes into a chronic one due to passing it on to others.