The Psychoanalysis of Race

460 Pages·1998·17.422 MB·English

by  Christopher Lane, Charles Shepherdson, Jacques Derrida,  Amit S. Rai, James Penney, Suzanne Yang, Slavoj Žižek, Alphonso Lingis, Julia Reinhard Lupton, Daniel Boyarin, Gwen Bergner, Merrill Cole, Tim Dean, Jacqueline Rose, Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, Claudia Tate, Jean Walton, David Marriott

analysis of Race
i
The Psychoanalysis of Race

The Psychoanalysis of Race
Edited by Christopher Lane
Columbia University Press
NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © 1998 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The psychoanalysis of race / edited by Christopher Lane,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-231-10946-6 (hardcover). — ISBN 0-231-10947-4 (pbk.)
1. Psychoanalysis and racism. 2. Race—Psychological aspects.
3. Race awareness. I. Lane, Christopher, 1966— .
BF175.4.R34P78 1998
155. 8'2—dc2i 97-38840
CIP
©
Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 987654321
p 10 987654321
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Psychoanalysis of Race: An Introduction
Christopher Lane
PART I. Current Dilemmas: Psychoanalysis and Postcolonialism
i. Human Diversity and the Sexual Relation
Charles Shepherdson
. Geopsychoanalysis: .. and the rest of the world”
2
Jacques Derrida
“Thus Spake the Subaltern”: Postcolonial Criticism
3
-
and the Scene of Desire
Amit S. Rai
Uncanny Foreigners: Does the Subaltern Speak Through
4
-
Julia Kristeva?
James Penney
A Question of Accent: Ethnicity and Transference
5
-
Suzanne Yang
6. Love Thy Neighbor? No, Thanks!
Slavoj Zi\ek
Schizoanalysis of Race
7
-
Alphonso Lingis
vi Contents
PART 11. History and the Origins of Racism
8. Ethnos and Circumcision in the Pauline Tradition:
A Psychoanalytic Exegesis
Julia Reinhard Lupton 1 193
What Does a Jew Want?; or, The Political Meaning
9-
of the Phallus
Daniel Boyarin 211
10. Myths of Masculinity: The Oedipus Complex and Douglass’s
1845 Narrative
Gwen Bergner 241
11. Nat Turner’s Thing
Merrill Cole 261
12. “Savage Ecstasy”: Colonialism and the Death Drive
Christopher Lane 282
U- The Germs of Empires: Heart of Darkness, Colonial Trauma,
and the Historiography of AIDS
Tim Dean 305
PART III. Psychoanalysis and Race, an Uncertain Conjunction
14. Wulf Sachs’s Black Hamlet
Jacqueline Rose 333
I5- The Comedy of Domination: Psychoanalysis
and the Conceit of Whiteness
Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks 353
16. Hitting “A Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick”:
Seraph on the Suwanee, Zora Neale Hurston’s Whiteface Novel
Claudia Tate 00 O
17 “Nightmare of the Uncoordinated White-folk”:
-
Race, Psychoanalysis, and H. D.’s Borderline
Jean Walton 395
18. Bonding Over Phobia
David Marriott 40
Contributors
43i
Index
435
Acknowledgments
Many people helped me complete this book. The Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation sustained me financially during
the 1995—96 academic year, and the English Department
at the University of Pennsylvania provided generous
hospitality and practical support. Roswitha Mueller inau¬
gurated the project by encouraging me to edit a special
issue of Discourse on the topic. For additional advice
or assistance, I thank Houston A. Baker Jr., Jacques
Derrida, Jerry Aline Flieger, Tom Keenan, Carla
Locatelli, Rene Major, Donald Moss, Donald Nicholson-
Smith, Jean-Michel Rabate, Rolando Romero, Jacqueline
Rose, Ben Saul, John David Smith, Wendy Steiner, and
Claudia Tate. Jason Friedman copyedited the manuscript
with remarkable care and efficiency, and Ann Miller at
Columbia University Press gave the project her enthusi¬
asm and expertise from its inception. Two anonymous
readers suggested a number of ways to improve the man¬
uscript, for which I thank them, and Jason Jones helped
me prepare the index. I am also grateful to Robert
Caserio, Paul Darrah, Tim Dean, Patricia Gherovici,
Kevin Kopelson, Deborah Luepnitz, Ligia Rave, and Joe
Valente—as well as members of the Philadelphia Lacan
Study Group—for their intellectual support and friend¬
ship during the 1995-96 academic year. Finally, but not
least, I thank the contributors to this collection for letting
me include their fine and thought-provoking work.
I acknowledge the following for permission to reprint
viii Acknowledgments
previously published material: Wayne State University Press for essays in
Discourse 19.2 (1997); Collection Vert et noir, Editions Galilee, and Johns Hopkins
University Press for Jacques Derrida’s essay “Geopsychoanalysis: . . . ‘and the
Rest of the World’ and Johns Hopkins University Press for a slightly different
version of Jacqueline Rose’s “Introduction to Black Hamlet.”