Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Predatory White Antiracism

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-23-2021

Abstract

The following paper engages paradoxical psychic possibilities regarding how investments of “woke” White people identifying as antiracist and participating in antiracism work may both relate to an authentic desire for racial justice while simultaneously enacting unconscious, unintended forms of identity violence upon self and others. Rooted within the field of second-wave critical White studies, and applying psychoanalytic insights to a contemporary political problem with historical antecedents, it presents three aggressive – often pleasurable, melancholic, and ego-centered – pitfalls of failing to earnestly contend with the constitution of our own antiracist subjectivities: addictive atonement, predatory self-sacrifice, and progressive hatred. Throughout, it calls for soulful justice work to accompany the social justice investments of White people, and to this end elaborates on the challenges to and constituents of such necessary psycho-emotional excavation and restoration.

Comments

Copyright © 2021, Springer Nature Limited

https://rdcu.be/cZoCn

Publication Title

Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society

DOI

10.1057/s41282-021-00222-8

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