scholarly journals Fanon’s Lacan and the Traumatogenic Child: Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Dynamics of Colonialism and Racism

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Burman
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Lacanian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Social Constitution ◽  
Black Skin ◽  
The Social ◽  
Lacanian Theory ◽  
The Look

This paper revisits Fanon’s relationship with psychoanalysis, specifically Lacanian psychoanalysis, via a close reading of his rhetorics of childhood – primarily as mobilized by the ‘Look, a Negro!’ scenario from Black Skin, White Masks, the traumatogenic scene which installs the black man’s sense of alienation from his own body and his inferiority. While this scene has been much discussed, the role accorded the child in this has attracted little attention. This paper focuses on the role and positioning of the child to reconsider Fanon’s ideas, in relation to his contribution to the social constitution of subjectivity, arguing that reading Fanon alongside both his citations of Lacan and some aspects of Lacanian theory opens up further interpretive possibilities in teasing out tensions in Fanon’s writing around models of subjectivity. Finally, it is argued that it is where Fanon retains an indeterminacy surrounding the child that he is most politically fruitful.

Psychoanalysis in Global Politics and International Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreja Zevnik ◽  
Moran Mandelbaum
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
Lacanian Psychoanalysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Lacanian Theory ◽  
The Individual

Critical and poststructural theories were introduced to global politics in early to mid-1990s. Since then there has been a proliferation of critical thinking in global politics with Derridean and Foucauldian approaches being the most popular. While psychoanalysis made its appearance and gained in popularity alongside other critical approaches to international politics in mid-1995, it has never become one of the “go to” theories. However, since 2010 psychoanalysis has been slowly reemerging on the global politics scene. If initially psychoanalytic approaches focused on a number of different theorists such as Castoriadis, Jung, Freud, and Lacan, the most recent thinking draws most significantly on the contribution of Lacanian psychoanalysis and thinkers such as Žižek, Butler, or Kristeva, all of whom heavily rely on Lacan. In postcolonial studies a distinct psychoanalytic account was also developed by Frantz Fanon. This contribution provides an overview of psychoanalytic approaches in the study of global politics with a focus on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and its derivatives (Žižek, Fanon, Butler, and Kristeva). The reason for the selected focus is simple—this has been the most popular approach since the introduction of this thinking to the discipline. Lacanian theory revolves around concepts such as desire, jouissance (radical/excess enjoyment), fantasy, and drive, and is concerned with explaining the social bond—that is how the subject comes to existence and what social factors determine the subject’s existence in society. Its distinct contribution to the field of global politics is its focus on conscious and unconscious factors. In other words, it focuses on that which can be represented and that which remains unrepresented but still impacts the world. Affects, symptoms, or unconscious material impact the way the subject (and society) behaves. While the theory’s foundations are in psychiatry (and many critiques of psychoanalysis point that out vehemently), psychoanalysis is not a theory of the individual and neither is it concerned with the individual psyche. It is a theory of society; Lacan even characterized it as antiphilosophy. Psychoanalysis has appeared in a number of different contexts in global politics. The presented selection is not exhaustive though the aim was to include the most significant contributions the theory has made to the discipline’s different subfields. Key areas include the state, sovereignty, ontology, Political Subjectivity, law and foreign policy; and subdisciplines such as postcolonialism (the theories of Frantz Fanon), racism, affect, Radical Politics and Cultural Criticism, and development and aid, as well as trauma, populism and nationalism.

scholarly journals IDENTITAS DIASPORIS TIGA GENERASI PEREMPUAN CINA DALAM ONLY A GIRL KARYA LIAN GOUW (Diasporic Identity of Three Generations of Chinese Females in Only A Girl Written by Lian Gouw)

ATAVISME ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Ratna Asmarani
Keyword(s):  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Great Role ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
Library Research ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family House

Identity is crucial in a person’s life. Diasporic identity is much more complicated because it involves at least two cultures. The focus of this paper is to analyze the diasporic identity of three generations of diasporic Chinese females as represented in Lian Gouw’s novel entitled Only a Girl. The data and supporting concepts are compiled using library research and close reading. The qualitative analysis is used to support the contextual literary analysis combining the intrinsic aspect focusing on the female characters and the extrinsic aspects concerning diaspora and identity. The results shows that each Chinese female character has tried to construct her own diasporic identity. However, the social, cultural, political, educational, and economic contexts play a great role in the struggles to construct the diasporic identity. It can be concluded that the younger the generation, the braver their effort to construct their diasporic identity and the braver their decision to take a distance with the big family house eventhough they have to face stronger and more complicated conflicts to realize and actualize their personal construction of diasporic identity.

scholarly journals Pesquisa psicanalítica de fenômenos sociais na universidade: potencialidade política na subversão dos discursos

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
Omar David Moreno Cárdenas ◽  
Andréa Máris Campos Guerra
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Lacanian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Social ◽  
De Se ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship

Resumo: Este artigo explora consequências epistemológicas e políticas de se realizar pesquisa de fenômenos sociais com um olhar psicanalítico dentro da universidade, tanto para a psicanálise, o campo social e a própria universidade. No início estabelecemos a relação entre ciência e psicanálise, o que nos permite refletir sobre a participação da psicanálise na universidade e as tensões clássicas desse intercambio. Em seguida, apresentamos o impasse de se pesquisar fenômenos sociais com a psicanálise face à indissociabilidade de teoria, método e clínica. Nossa chave de leitura é a teoria dos discursos da psicanálise lacaniana, indicando o potencial político dessa modalidade de pesquisa ao causar subversões nas formas de poder e dominação discursiva na universidade, nas instituições de psicanálise e no campo social.Palavras-chave: Fenômenos sociais; Pesquisa psicanalítica; Teoria dos discursos; Psicanálise; Subversão. Psychoanalytic research on social phenomena in university: political potentiality within subversion of discoursesAbstract: This paper explores the epistemological and political consequences of conducting research on social phenomena from a psychoanalytic perspective within the university, for the psychoanalysis, the social field and the university. In the beginning, we established the relationship between science and psychoanalysis, which allows us to reflect on the psychoanalysis participation in the university and the classic tensions of this exchange. Next, we present the impasse of researching social phenomena from the psychoanalysis taking in account the indissociability between theory, method and clinic. Our theoretical perspective is the discourses theory of Lacanian psychoanalysis, indicating the political potential of this research modality by causing subversions in the forms of power and discursive domination in the university, in the institutions of psychoanalysis and in the social field.Keywords: Social phenomena; Psychoanalytical research; Discourses theory; Psychoanalysis; Subversion. 

scholarly journals The Tricky ’True Object’: Bourdieu’s Masculine Domination and Historicity

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 210
Author(s):  
Miklos Hadas
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Symbolic Violence ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
French Version ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Church

Pierre Bourdieu’s Masculine Domination was published in English in 2001, three years after the appearance of the French version. In order to deconstruct in vivo the working of sociological paradigm-alchemy, a close reading of the Bourdieusian argument is offered. After summing up the main thesis of the book, Bourdieu’s statements will be intended to be questioned, according to which the school, the family, the state and the church would reproduce, in the long run, masculine domination. The paper will also seek to identify the methodological trick of the Bourdieusian vision on history, namely that, metaphorically speaking, he compares the streaming river to the riverside cliffs. It will be argued that when Bourdieu discusses ‘the constancy of habitus’, the ‘permanence in and through change’, or the ‘strength of the structure’, he extends his paradigm about the displacement of the social structure to the displacement of the men/women relationship. Hence, it will be suggested that, in opposition to Bourdieu’s thesis, masculine domination is not of universal validity but its structural weight and character have fundamentally changed in the long run, i.e. the masculine habitual centre gradually shifted from a social practice governed by the drives of physical violence to symbolic violence.

Commending a freedman. Virtues and masculinities in the recommendation letters of Cicero and Pliny the Younger

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 401-418
Author(s):  
Lisa Hagelin
Keyword(s):  
Social Complexity ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Imperial Rome ◽  
Gender Discourse ◽  
Pliny The Younger ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cardinal Virtue

This article explores Roman freedmen’s masculine positions expressed as virtues, qualities, and ideals in the recommendation letters of Cicero and Pliny the Younger. It discusses whether there were specific freedman virtues, qualities, and ideals and what consequences their existence or absence had for freedmen’s constructions of masculinity. A critical close reading of the texts is applied, combined with theories of masculinity, where hegemonic masculinity is a key concept. It is concluded that there were no virtues or qualities that were specific or exclusive to freedmen. A distinct set of virtues for freedmen did not exist in Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome, since much the same behaviour and qualities are seen as manly and desirable for freedmen as for freeborn male citizens of high birth. However, freedmen cannot comply with the hegemonic masculinity in full, since they cannot embody the Roman masculine ideal of the vir bonus and cannot be associated with the Roman cardinal virtue virtus, which was central in the construction of masculinity in the Roman world. This illustrates the complex Roman gender discourse and, on the whole, the social complexity of Roman society.

Mute Cries: Louis Althusser Between Roberto Álvarez Ríos and Wifredo Lam

ARTMargins ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
Bécquer Seguín
Keyword(s):  
Lacanian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Louis Althusser ◽  
Aleatory Materialism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Political Milieu ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Structural Marxism

This introductory essay examines the role of two articles on the Cuban painters Roberto Álvarez Ríos and Wifredo Lam, “A Young Cuban Painter Before Surrealism: Álvarez Ríos” (1962) and “Lam” (1977), in the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser's writing on art. It argues that these largely ignored articles offer snapshots of two key shifts in Althusser's thought: his transition, during the early 1960s, from Hegelian Marxism to structural Marxism, and, during the late 1970s, from structural Marxism to so-called aleatory materialism. It contextualizes the articles in the social and political milieu of French philosophy during the 1960s and 70s and shows how his articles on the Cuban painters, specifically, and art, more generally, are largely concerned with contemporary developments in the third world, a subject that receives scant attention elsewhere in his work. The articles not only register Althusser's reflections on Lacanian psychoanalysis, the nature of language, and the philosophy of history, but also reveal that his connections with Latin America to exceed mere questions of intellectual reception.

The Social Constitution of Action

1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Greenwood
Keyword(s):  
Social Constitution ◽  
The Social
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