File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1996/96-02-20.131, message 219


Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 16:33:21 -0500 (EST)
From: Amardeep Singh <asingh-AT-emerald.tufts.edu>
Subject: Re: African Americans and psychoanalysis


> My needs are fairly specific:  People keep telling me that psychoanalytic 
> theory is a hegemonic discourse, etc.  I'm trying to give this label some 
> specificity to identify exactly what invites black resistance to 
> psychoanalysis.  In short, it is seldom used.  Why not?

Claudia,

First, about the use of the word 'hegemonic': psychoanalytic theory probably 
_is_ a 'hegemonic' discourse to a critic engaged in an 'oppositional 
politics.' Mainly this is true because it doesn't intend itself 
(sticking to Lacan here) as an oppositional discourse, and this failure 
of intention automatically makes it 'hegemonic' from the 'oppositional' 
perspective. 
Fanon is the classic example of the failed attempt to 'resist' the 
psychic structures that he exposes- the automatism of racism. 
But all of this binary thinking gives me a headache, and I don't like the 
terms 'hegemonic'/'oppositional' at all really these days. So I'll try 
to take up the question on a different tip.
 
I'm tempted to say that there is nothing 'essentially' disjunctive about 
psychoanalysis and the study of the experience of African Americans, that 
the lack of coincidence might be somewhat accidental, and somewhat owing 
to the _materialist_ slant of what I understand to be the dominant 
intellectual threads in African-American Studies since the sixties. (Here 
I might be mistaken- do you agree with this assertion?) 
Psychoanalysis and materialism were effectively polarized as opposites 
until only very recently. The answer here would be that there is no 
"exact" reason for "black resistance to psychoanalysis."

Of course this answer might still be dodging your question. And I'm not 
sure that I want to take the position of the 
psychoanalyst/ apologist-for-psychoanalytic-discourse here at all. 
My own experience with psychoanalytic theory might be the only/best way 
to answer your question. I've had roughly three phases: 
-initial skepticism accompanied by a grudging respect for the 
 difficulty/obscurity of the jargon; 
-followed by an intense and enthusiastic immersion (in wild, 'materialist' 
 psychoanalysis, whose terms and aims were heavily influenced by Zizek and 
 Deleuze/Guattari);
-followed, most recently, by a certain distancing, a growing suspicion of 
 the usefulness of the discourse. Not because of the 'un-correctness' 
 of its politics but rather because by itself it hasn't been producing 
 useful insights for me.

A lot of the motivations for my answering the way I have may be tied up 
in my experience with the discipline- I'm not sure, and can't sort those 
issues all out right here. But there are maybe better questions: have I 
gained anything from psychoanalysis besides jargon? Would I recommend (to, 
say, a feminist, a postcolonialist, or an African-Americanist) initiating a 
study of Lacan? No. I don't think I would. 

I've gone on too long and didn't answer the question. Maybe I just needed 
to 'get it all out,' to answer, with typical critical narcissism, 'my own 
questions' ...

-deep 


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