After postmemory: disappearance, necropolitics, and the crisis of witness in Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys

This paper aims to explore how Colson Whitehead’s novel The Nickel Boys changes our understanding of modern trauma theory and postmemory by looking at absence as opposed to memories of the events that rendered children absent. Most of the work on The Nickel Boys has been conducted through a historical archaeology-based approach in hopes of hearing the voices of child victims of the Dozier School for Boys. This article argues that The Nickel Boys departs from traditional models of testimonial authorship by presenting a witness whose identity is substituted rather than stable. Additionally, Whitehead’s style of storytelling challenges both the authority of those testimonies incorporated within the narrative and the methodologies used to create anonymity within the narrative itself. This article posits that memory does not move freely through generations as it is often displaced through the processes of replacement and misattribution. Taking inspiration from the work of Cathy Caruth, Marianne Hirsch, Achille Mbembe and Saidiya Hartman, it explores ways racial violence creates both trauma and also removes that trauma from our archives.