The Affective Life of Racism – A Decolonial, Intersectional, Critical Whiteness-Perspective

Beschreibung

Whiteness is a powerful signifier in the cultural symbolic of Western societies. It marks
the contradictions of modernity: the Enlightenment that could accommodate slavery;
Europe as a continent of human rights, which is developing into a fortress and allowing
refugees to drown in the Mediterranean instead of applying its right of asylum. The
contradiction between the self-image of Western nations as free, democratic, human
rights-oriented societies and the reality of racism manifests itself not only politically and
culturally, but also in the subjects. The affects that articulate themselves culturally in the
context of racism, but above all in and between the subjects, are deeply rooted in this
contradiction. In this paper, an empirical study dealing with white* (feminist)
psychotherapists and their racially marked clientele will be used to trace the dynamics of the intersection of racism, gender and intersectionality. In their self-image as
emancipated, discrimination-sensitive persons, the therapists miss the fact that their
whiteness is a signifier in racism and that they are always part of racism – albeit against
their will. The historical amnesia of the history of seizure in white* dominance cultures
(imperialism, colonialism, the Holocaust) haunts the therapists and this is articulated in
more or less affective anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic or colonial racism. On the basis of the
psychoanalytic theory of affect, it will finally be made clear how its revolutionary potential
(the dynamic unconscious) can contribute to the understanding of racism and at the same
time its reactionary potential (the topological unconscious) can be used to reveal with the
help of a decolonial-deconstructivist analysis why established psychological affect
theories themselves promote racism and sexism.

Zeitraum	15 Juni 2022 → 18 Juni 2022
Gehalten am	University of Milano-Bicocca Milan, Italien
Bekanntheitsgrad	International