A Liberation Psychoanalytic Account of Racism

Abstract

Lacanian psychoanalysis has been a theoretical resource for critical psychology since its formal inception in the 1970s. In this essay, I critically review some of the major Lacanian psychoanalytic accounts of racism, particularly over the last 30 years, in an attempt to expand these accounts through a liberatory framework. My two-fold aim with the theoreticomethodological praxis that I am calling liberation psychoanalysis is: (1) to decolonize Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis and (2) to historicize racism within a psychoanalytic reading that is dialectically materialist. Decolonizing psychoanalysis does not entail canceling it; on the contrary, metonymic decolonization is the name for critical yet sympathetic readings of modern fields of knowledge (e.g., psychoanalysis) from a Global Southern perspective, the ultimate goal of which is worlding.