Course info

Today, one has full access to varied historical, sociological, and anthropological accounts of racism. These accounts make us conscious of the extent of the problem and provide us with sufficient knowledge to render it null and void. Why then isn’t racism a thing of the past? Why does it seem to evolve and be implemented in new sophisticated ways? This seminar will explore the hypothesis that the struggle with racism requires an engagement with the unconscious. If racism is immersed in the unconscious, this means that it is not simply a problem of knowing but a problem of enjoying. Namely, it doesn’t matter how much we know, racist enjoyment will find a way to manifest itself. Fantasy organizes enjoyment and, in this sense, racism manifests itself first and foremost through the racist fantasy. This seminar will explore the notion of the racist fantasy. It will follow the psychoanalytic dictum of interpreting psychic life as being always already implicated in cultural life, and vice versa. Delving into several texts written by contemporary cultural theorists and psychoanalysts, racism will be described simultaneously as a subjective and a social formation, putting an emphasis on the individual and collective modes of gratifications it puts into play. Participants are expected to inform themselves of the suggested literature and participate in a discussion in class. The seminar will be held in English.
Themes explored in the seminar: The structure of fantasy; enjoyment as a sociological concept; the “theft of enjoyment” thesis: “the man of color and the white woman”; race as a “medium” rather than “social construct”; apartheid as a mode of desire; the skin as a psychic and cultural object; fetishism and racism; Fanon’s “Blackness” and “non-being”; Donald Glover’s Atlanta Season 3: “Rich Wigga, Poor Wigga”