Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory

325 Pages·2021·4.766 MB·English

by  Sheldon George, Derek Hook

“‘Lacan” and “race” seem two totally disparate notions: obscure French
theory, brutal social struggles… However, this book provides an explosive
mixture of the two—after reading it, neither Lacanian theory nor racism and
anti-racist struggles will appear the same to you. George and Hook
demonstrate that authentic theory is needed today more than ever. An
instant classic!’
Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
‘Lacan and Race arrives at a very significant and urgent historical moment, one
that symbolically and existentially speaks to the logics of racism as
necropolitical, consumptive, phantasmatic, and a problematic pleasurable
perversity. Given the unabashed reemergence of white racism within the
context of a greater neo-fascist threat, its analysis is critically needed.’
George Yancy, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor
of Philosophy at Emory University, USA
‘This groundbreaking volume, edited by Sheldon George and Derek Hook, turns
conventional notions of race and racism on their head, delivering compelling
Lacanian perspectives from leading scholars in the field. Including thought-
provoking ideas such as racism as enjoyment and race as an object of the
drive—as well as covering a breadth of forms of contemporary racism—this book
will undoubtedly inspire future scholarship and conversations about race alike!
With Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory, George and Hook
have brought us what will undoubtedly serve as the central text on the subject for
many years to come.’
Stephanie Swales, University of Dallas, USA,
co-author of Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with
Freud and Lacan: On and Off the Couch
‘Written at a time of heightened polarization, xenophobia, and ethno-
nationalism, the essays in this collection detail various ways to alter the
structures of hatred and otherness that make racism seem immovable and
inevitable. Probing and incisive, the essays draw on a range of insights from
Lacanian psychoanalysis concerning race transference and unconscious
fantasy, the enjoyment of the Other, and the forms of jouissance that continue
to propel and underwrite racism today. Insightful, rigorous, and strongly
recommended.’
Christopher Lane, editor of The Psychoanalysis of Race
‘Of late, Lacanian theory has come to play an increasingly important role in
critical analyses of gender and sexuality. This sterling collection presents the
strongest case to date for extending such analysis to the category of race. In
powerful, wide-ranging essays, the contributors demonstrate time and again
that psychoanalytic concepts such as fantasy, fetishism, jouissance, and
disavowal aren’t merely applicable to the phenomena of racial identification
and racism, but are absolutely integral to grasping how such phenomena
function in the first place. A must read—not only for those still laboring under
the (mis)belief that Lacan was an obscurantist whose work has little to
contribute to social theory, but especially for those committed to exploring the
socio-political purchase of psychoanalysis.’
Russell Sbriglia, Seton Hall University, USA
‘No doubt race and racism are dynamically back on the agenda, both in the
US and internationally. Recent events demand a rigorous attempt to clarify
what is at stake beyond the obvious: what keeps returning, what seems to resist
understanding and intervention. Focusing on the “other scene” animating the
multiplicity of drives, identifications, enjoyments and fantasies involved,
psychoanalysis can help considerably in this process. This rigorous and timely
collection put together by George and Hook is bound to unsettle and reorient
our energies, intellectual and affective, by brilliantly orchestrating an
impressive Lacan-inspired re-appraisal of our ongoing predicament.’
Professor Yannis Stavrakakis, Aristotle University
of Thessaloniki, Greece, author of Lacan and the Political and
The Lacanian Left: Psychoanalysis, Theory, Politics
‘In a time like ours, when otherness and singularity are universally
commodified, nothing like Lacanian psychoanalysis can throw light on the
tension between One and Other. In the early 1970s Lacan indeed predicted
the explosion of racism in conjunction with “capitalist progress.” This
wonderful book explores and contextualizes racism by taking seriously
Lacan’s insight that its proliferation and tenacity has less to do with what
we know about the other than with what we don’t know about ourselves.’
Fabio Vighi, Cardiff University, UK,
and author of Zizek’s Dialectics
Lacan and Race
This edited volume draws upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to examine
the conscious and unconscious forces underlying race as a social formation,
conceptualizing race, racial identity, and racism in ways that go beyond
traditional modes of psychoanalytic thought.
Featuring contributions by Lacanian scholars from diverse geographical
and disciplinary contexts, chapters span a wide breadth of topics, including
white nationalism and contemporary debates over confederate monuments;
emergent theories of race rooted in Afropessimism and postcolonialism;
analyses of racism in apartheid and American slavery; clinical reflections on
Latinx and other racialized patients; and applications of Lacan’s concepts of
the lamella, drive, and sexuation to processes of racialization. The collection
both reorients readers’ understandings of race through its deployment of
Lacanian theory and redefines the Lacanian subject through its theorizing of
subjectivity in relation to race, racism, and racial identification.
Lacan and Race will be a definitive text for psychoanalytic theorists and
contemporary scholars of race, appealing to readers across the fields of
psychology, cultural studies, humanities, politics, and sociology.
Sheldon George is professor and chair of English at Simmons University,
USA. He is the author of Trauma and Race: A Lacanian Study of African American
Racial Identity.
Derek Hook is an associate professor of Psychology at Duquesne University,
USA, and an extraordinary professor of Psychology at the University of
Pretoria, South Africa. He is the author of Six Moments in Lacan.
The Psychology and The Other Book Series
Series Editor
David M. Goodman
Associate Editors
Brian W. Becker, Donna M. Orange, Eric R. Severson
The Psychology and the Other Book Series highlights creative work at the intersections
between psychology and the vast array of disciplines relevant to the human psyche.
The interdisciplinary focus of this series brings psychology into conversation with
continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, religious studies, anthropology, sociology,
and social/critical theory. The cross-fertilization of theory and practice, encom-
passing such a range of perspectives, encourages the exploration of alternative
paradigms and newly articulated vocabularies that speak to human identity,
freedom, and suffering. Thus, we are encouraged to reimagine our encounters with
difference, our notions of the “other,” and what constitutes therapeutic modalities.
The study and practices of mental health practitioners, psychoanalysts, and
scholars in the humanities will be sharpened, enhanced, and illuminated by
these vibrant conversations, representing pluralistic methods of inquiry, in-
cluding those typically identified as psychoanalytic, humanistic, qualitative,
phenomenological, or existential.
Series Titles
Trust and Trauma
An Interdisciplinary Study in Human Nature
by Michael Oppenheim
Self and Other in an Age of Uncertain Meaning
Communication and the Marriage of Minds
by Timothy D. Stephen
For a full list of titles in the series, please visit the Routledge website at: https://
www.routledge.com/Psychology-and-the-Other/book-series/PSYOTH
Lacan and Race
Racism, Identity, and
Psychoanalytic Theory
Edited by
Sheldon George
and Derek Hook
First published 2022
by Routledge
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And by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Taylor & Francis
The right of Sheldon George and Derek Hook to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: George, Sheldon, 1973- editor. | Hook, Derek, editor.
Title: Lacan and race: racism, identity and psychoanalytic theory /
edited by Sheldon George and Derek Hook.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. | Series: Psychology
and the other | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021001245 (print) | LCCN 2021001246 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367341923 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367345976 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780429326790 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Lacan, Jacques, 1901-1981. | Psychoanalysis and
racism. | Racism‐‐Psychological aspects. | Race‐‐Psychological
aspects. | Race awareness.
Classification: LCC BF175.4.R34 L33 2022 (print) | LCC
BF175.4.R34 (ebook) | DDC 155.8/2‐‐dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001245
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001246
ISBN: 978-0-367-34192-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-34597-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-32679-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Baskerville
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents
List of Contributors x
Introduction: theorizing race, racism, and racial
identification 1
SHELDON GEORGE AND DEREK HOOK
PART I
Reading racism through Lacan 17
1 The bedlam of the lynch mob: racism and enjoying
through the other 19
TODD MCGOWAN
2 Pilfered pleasure: on racism as “the theft of enjoyment” 35
DEREK HOOK
3 Confederate signifiers in Vermont: fetish objects and
racist enjoyment 51
HILARY NERONI
4 The function and field of speech and language in white
nationalist manifestoes 65
E. CHEBROLU
5 Oedipal Empire: psychoanalysis, Indigenous Peoples,
and the Oedipus Complex in colonial context 83
WAYNE WAPEEMUKWA
viii Contents
PART II
Racial identification and the subversion of race 103
6 In medium race: traversing the fantasy of post-race
discourse 105
JENNIFER FRIEDLANDER
7 The object of apartheid desire: a Lacanian approach to
racism and ideology 121
DEREK HOOK
8 Raced group pathologies and cultural sublimation 146
MOLLY ANNE ROTHENBERG
PART III
Race and the clinic 163
9 Race, perversion, and jouissance in Portrait of Jason 165
SHEILA L. CAVANAGH
10 The lost souls of the barrio: Lacanian psychoanalysis in
the Ghetto 183
PATRICIA GHEROVICI
11 Dereliction: Afropessimism, anti-Blackness, and
Lacanian psychoanalysis 205
KAREEN MALONE AND TIARA JACKSON
12 Japanese inter-signifier subjects: jouissance in the locus of
the character 223
KAZUSHIGE SHINGU
PART IV
Theorizing the racialized Lacanian subject 239
13 The Lacanian subject of race: sexuation, the drive, and
racial subjectivity 241
SHELDON GEORGE
Contents ix
14 Skin-things, fleshy matters, and phantasies of race:
Lacan’s myth of the lamella 263
MICHELLE STEPHENS
15 Fanon’s “zone of nonbeing”: Blackness and the politics
of the Real 284
GAUTAM BASU THAKUR
Afterword: there is only one race… 299
KALPANA R. SESHADRI
Index 305