JBSP Online: Derek Hook – ‘Fanon via Lacan, or: Decolonization by Psychoanalytic Means…?’

journal update

Derek Hook’s essay for the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, published online in advance of the paper edition.

Derek Hook – ‘Fanon via Lacan, or: Decolonization by Psychoanalytic Means…?’: JBSP Special Edition Capital, Sex and Africa (Originally published online: 27 February 2020).

Abstract: Lacanian psychoanalysis is often considered antithetical to Frantz Fanon’s decolonizing political project. This paper argues, by contrast, that by exploring hitherto under-explored aspects of the Fanon-Lacan relation we are able to re-articulate many of Fanon’s most crucial political insights. The paper adopts three routes of enquiry. Firstly, it investigates Fanon’s earliest citations of Lacan, noting how Fanon utilizes Lacan’s ideas of historically-situated forms of madness, (mis)recognition, paranoia and psychic causality. Secondly, it highlights a series of conceptual affinities that exist between the work of the two theorists including idea of sociogeny, the importance of symbolic (or social) structure, the notion of fantasy and of a social (or transindividual) unconscious. Thirdly, it provides an instructive example of how Fanon’s theorizations of colonial oppression might be supplemented by means of Lacanian social theory especially in respect of how the colonized are positioned as “non-subjects” relative to the master-signifier of whiteness.

Full article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2020.1732575

Derek Hook, Department of Psychology, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

Accessing the JBSP Online: The online version of the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology publishes articles in advance of the paper edition. Articles can be accessed via our publisher’s website: JBSP at Taylor & Francis Online. Access to the JBSP is free to all members of the society, who also receive the quarterly paper copy of the journal as part of their subscription. You can find out more about becoming a member and supporting the BSP on the membership webpage. If you are not a member of the BSP, you can purchase articles from the site, or log in using institutional or personal access via Shibboleth and OpenAthens.

Reminder: The call for papers is now open for the British Society for Phenomenology’s 2020 Annual Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’, co-sponsored with Egenis at the University of Exeter and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. The conference is to be held in Exeter, UK, from Thursday 3 – Saturday 5 September 2020.  For more details – including keynote speakers – see the BSP 2020 annual conference homepage.