ASRC 6010

Psychoanalysis & Race

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2017-2018.

This graduate seminar will examine direct and indirect claims by W.E.B. DuBois, Franz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter, and Hortense Spillers for sociogeny as both a critique of and supplement to psychoanalytical theories and theorizations in Hegel, Freud, and Lacan. At its most basic, the seminar will interrogate how these African diaspora thinkers engage with psychoanalytical theories and practices. Because sociogeny posits an imperative for social analysis in the theorization of the psyche, we want to take a close look at how each of our thinkers presents his or her case for such an imperative. If sociogeny is an argument for racialization of the unconscious, then we also need to ask ourselves the following questions: What is racialization as a critical practice? Don't subjects already enter the world raced and gendered? Is it possible to racialize the mind and the unconscious? What relations are there between race, racialization, and pathology? Between race, racialization, and wellbeing? A component of the course will also be devoted to race and psychotherapy. One of the requirements of the seminar includes the individual selection, presentation, and analysis of a text, episode, poem, song, video, or film-clip that will invite us collectively to brainstorm answers to the questions above and related inquiries.

When Offered Fall.

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