The Unconscious Roots of Racism

This seminar examines why racism persists and evolves despite extensive historical, sociological, and anthropological studies. It hypothesizes that combating racism requires engaging with the unconscious mind, as racism involves not just knowledge but also unconscious enjoyment. The course will explore the concept of "racist fantasy" and its role in organizing enjoyment, asserting that racism manifests through these fantasies. By analyzing contemporary cultural theorists and psychoanalysts' texts, the seminar will discuss racism as both a subjective and social phenomenon, focusing on the individual and collective gratifications it provides. Participants should read the suggested literature and engage in class discussions. The seminar will be conducted in English.

The student will learn to assess and analyze contemporary forms of racism using a psychoanalytically informed conceptual framework. The student will develop a psychoanalytic vocabulary that concerns notions such as the unconscious, desire, enjoyment, fantasy, and more. Particular instances of racism will be investigated in class.

The seminar assists psychotherapists in identifying racism not merely as a problem of knowledge and education, but as an outcome of the unconscious drive for enjoyment. In this sense, it helps practitioners engage with racism as an effect of the unconscious, enabling them to take a therapeutic position rather than a pedagogical one. I can elaborate further on this subject if you wish.

Method: 
Student presentations, reading, assignments.

Psychologists, psychotherapists, disability caregivers, practitioners, early childhood teachers, school teachers, parents, high functioning autistic people

Dr. Leon S. Brenner (Ph.D.) is a psychoanalytic theorist and psychoanalyst from Berlin. Brenner’s work draws from the Freudian and Lacanian traditions of psychoanalysis, and his interest lies in the understanding of the relationship between culture and psychopathology. His book The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language, is a bestseller in psychology in Palgrave/Springer publishing in 2021. He has published several academic papers about autism and promotes a novel approach to the treatment of autism today in many training institutes around the world and online.

• Basu Thakur, G. (2022). Fanon's ‘zone of nonbeing’: Blackness and the politics of the Real. In: Lacan and Race (George & Hook ed.). Routledge.
• Fanon, F. (2008). Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Richard Philcox. Grove Press.
• Freud, S. (1921). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XVIII (1920–1922).
• George, S. (2016). Trauma and Race. Baylor University Press.
• Glover, D. (Writer) & Glover, D. (Director). (2022, May 12). Rich Wigga, Poor Wigga (Season 3, Episode 9). [TV series episode]. In Glover, D., Simms, P., McGunigle, D., Glover, S., Murai, H., Robinson, S., (Executive Producers), Atlanta. FX.
• Hook, D. (2005). The Racial Stereotype, Colonial Discourse, Fetishism, and Racism. PINS, vol. 31, pp. 701–734.
• Hook, D. (2022). Pilfered pleasure: on racism as ‘the theft of enjoyment. In: Lacan and Race (George & Hook ed.). Routledge.
• Hook, D. (2022). The object of apartheid desire: a Lacanian approach to racism and ideology. In: Lacan and Race (George & Hook ed.). Routledge.
• McGowan, T. (2022). The Racist Fantasy: Unconscious Roots of Hatred. Bloomsbury.
• Mitchell, W.J.T. (2012). Seeing Through Race. Harvard University Press.
• Seshadri-Crooks, K. (2008). Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race. Routledge.