Signs of traumatic behavior in the slave owner old Corregidora’s wife: An archetypal reading of Gayl Jones’ Corregidora

In spite of numerous narratives about slavery and its multi-dimensional effects, and huge amount of critical examinations and readings rendered on African – American productions, this traumatic phenomenon in human history has never lost its immense significance through various discourses. The present article tries to re-open Gayl Jones’ novel, Corregidora, as one of the most distinguished works in African – American literature with a critical concentration on the inevitable impacts of sexual and specifically homosexual exploitation of slavery era under the light of an archetypal approach toward the issue of posttraumatic stress disorder in female identities of the story. Mostly, the novel has gone through psychoanalytical, feminist and historical critiques and primarily as a text of individual and cultural trauma, which depicts the long lasting influences of slavery on the modern African – American identity. The current article tends to investigate the narrative significance of Ursa Corregidora’s traumatic response towards homosexual stimuli in addition to the role of collective memory on its formation. Indeed, through the archetypal analysis, the article quests for the symptoms of sexual disorder like that of the Corregidora’s white wife. Moreover, it attempts to show how the hierarchical, power-based and patriarchal system of slavery transforms its subjectivities into unstable and traumatized identities. Finally, the ultimate purpose of the article is to demonstrate that slavery as a cultural traumatic phenomenon has not chosen its victims, but, every single subject in this hierarchical system has gone through a burden of physical and psychological injuries rooted in a collective unconsciousness.