Loading…

Between Fanon and Lacan: Rupturing Spaces for the Return of the Oppressed

Race is something about which we would rather not speak. Yet it speaks through our everyday enactments structured through our modes of looking. Black Lives Matter and Me Too have shown that something continues to speak in the place where it has been repressed/oppressed. How do we engage with these r...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in gender and sexuality 2021-10, Vol.22 (4), p.278-292
Main Author: Lau, Ursula
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Race is something about which we would rather not speak. Yet it speaks through our everyday enactments structured through our modes of looking. Black Lives Matter and Me Too have shown that something continues to speak in the place where it has been repressed/oppressed. How do we engage with these ruptures in a critical-empathic manner? Can Lacanian psychoanalysis, aligned with a Fanonian sociogeny, offer a dual lens to make sense of intersubjective racialized enactments, to inform possibilities for decolonial engagement? In this article, I explore the unconscious ruptures between myself (a South African Asian-Chinese woman) coming to recognize my Whiteness performed on a go-along and residents of "the township" historically designated "Black." Blackness and Whiteness are situationally performed, arising in moments of attunement/misrecognition. Reconstituting the oppressive gaze involves a "working through" (within and without) to look toward ourselves for recognition so that we can witness the self/other without rupturing apart.
ISSN:1524-0657
1940-9206
DOI:10.1080/15240657.2021.1996737