Psychoanalysis, Race and Racism

Catalog description

Historically, the relationship between psychoanalysis, the matter of race, and racism has been both complex and fraught. Understanding and rectifying this history is crucial, as psychoanalysis takes as its primary charge the theorization and treatment of psychic attachments which shape not just individual experience, but also relations between subjects, as well as the ways in which experiences of belonging and exclusion shape the social order. Indeed, some strains of psychoanalytic thought have problematically proposed that “the Other has no color”; still, a growing number of psychoanalytic theorists and practitioners offer critical insight into the problem of racial subjectification and racism by considering their operations through the lens of psychoanalytic concepts such as fantasy, identification, melancholy, projection, and negation, among others. This course explores the limits and possibilities of thinking psychoanalytic theory, race, and racism together. Our work will include close readings of theoretical texts as well as considerations of literary texts, works of art, and musical forms that serve as sites where matters of subjectification, relationality, and belonging are contested. Course material may include works by Bass, Bollas, Cheng, Eng, Fanon, Freud, Gherovici, Hartman, Lacan, Moss, Sexton, Spillers, Stephens, Viego, and Wilderson.