[Overview][Lecture 1][Lecture 2][Lecture 3]
AHRB CentreCATH Lecture Series I, 2004-5
Shadow at the Heart: America's Racial Melancholy and the Uses of Michel Foucault's 'Care of the Self' as Therapeutic Practice
Professor Jane Flax, Department of Political Science, Howard University
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| Jane Flax |
The Lectures:
1 The Veil of Ignorance?: Race/Gender Domination as Defense Against Grief and Narcissistic wounds. Text
Wednesday 17 November, 2004: 14.00-16.00:
Venue: LG 19 in the Michael Sadler Building, University of Leeds
2 Tracking Melancholy: Two Enactments - 'Monster's Ball' and 'The Deep End'.. Text
Wednesday 17 November, 2004: 18.00-19.30:
Venue: LG 19 in the Michael Sadler Building, University of Leeds
3 Therapy: Foucault's Late Essays, Subjectivity and 'Care of the Self' as Ethical and Political Practices Text
Thursday 18 November, 2004: 17.30-19.00:
Venue: LG 19 in the Michael Sadler Building, University of Leeds
Introduction
Race/gender domination is central to and a major constitutive force
in American politics. In regard to black/white race/gender relations,
the foundational role slavery played in the material, subjective, legal
and ethical founding of this country, while often denied, is key.
That past is not past, but lives on in contemporary subject formation
and many aspects of political, economic and cultural life. Yet,
race/gender domination and its effects disrupt the dominant, legitimating
narratives of intra-and intersubjective practices. Hence it is either
denied or its causes and effects are shifted to the raced other. Despite
such denial and splitting, domination and subordination are persistently
reenacted, often in the very public and subjective practices and ideas
that are said to be its opposite or remedy. The dynamics, power relations
and modes of thinking and subjectivity arising out of and renewing race/gender
domination do not remain contained within their originary sites and ordinary
domains. While the harm done within their customary domains is bad
enough, these practices now inform the default response of both public
officials and citizens to many perceived threats (e.g. terrorism, the
"aliens" within). As they play out internationally, for
example in current foreign policy, the possible scope of destruction multiplies
in terrifying ways.
The psychic register of fantasy is key to understanding and sustaining race/domination. Anne Anlin Cheng's idea of racial melancholy and its racialized forms-particular the white fantasy of impossible perfection - permits a deeper understanding of the attraction and power of notions like the abstract individual or pure reason, or recent liberal constructs such as John Rawls's original position and the veil of ignorance. To track racial melancholy, I discuss two films, Monster's Ball and The Deep End. Particular attention is paid to racially specific gender positions, sexuality, and class and the interweaving of and tensions between these. Foucault's late essays on power, subjectivity and ethics suggest a notion of subjectivity as process and ethical practices that bypass many problems of either the universalist "deep substance" approach or structuralist determinism. This then opens up questions of aesthetics, ethics, and richer forms of political life and permits a movement from subject oriented politics to object oriented ones that may better address the pathologies of melancholic American political practices.
Biography
Jane Flax received her BA at Berkeley and her Ph.D at Yale. While studying political theory at Yale, she undertook training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Current she is professor of political science at Howard University in Washington, DC and maintains a private psychotherapy practice. Her writing crosses and interweaves many disciplines--political theory, philosophy, gender theory, critical race theory, psychoanalysis and cultural studies. She is the author of three books (Thinking Fragments, Disputed Subjects, and The American Dream in Black and White),and many articles appearing in leading journals. The receipient of major grants, she has lectured throughout North America, Brazil, South Africa, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The current lectures are taken from her book in progress, Shadow at the Heart:Race/Gender Melancholia and American Politics
