Fanon, Lacan, and the Primal Scene of Anti-Blackness: The Masochist Jouissance of White Racism

Lecture by Dr Derek Hook

Monday 27 June 2022
7pm (Berlin Time)

In person at Gerichtstraße 45, 13347 Berlin - Wedding (courtyard)
and Via Zoom

8 € / 5 € Waged / Student 

Description

Explores why the relationship (between Black man and white woman) takes on the crucial role it does in the libidinal economy of racism.

One of the most intriguing and relatively unexplored intersections between Frantz Fanon’s thought and psychoanalysis occurs in a section of Black Skin White Masks where Fanon poses the question of the sexual masochism that underlies facets of white racism. This provides not merely a means of extending the well-known Lacanian theory of racism-as-jouissance (i.e. racism as 'the theft of enjoyment'), it also helps us understand why, under conditions of anti-blackness/racism, the sexual relation between the Black and the white woman comes to be so libidinally-invested – fantasmatically elaborated – that it counts as 'the primal scene of anti-blackness'. This talk will explore why such a relationship (between Black man and white woman) takes on the crucial role it does in the libidinal economy of racism, and pose a series of psychoanalytic answers to this question: why does racism, counter-intuitively, also entail the element of masochistic jouissance?