Racial imagery in psychic life is overdetermined and resists single-cause explanation

Evidence

In principle it would be possible to tackle such questions by applying the model of overdetermination that governs psychoanalytic interpretation (Laplanche and Leclaire). It is a clinical commonplace that the same dream image (e.g., a train running into a wall) can have many different meanings, the exact one only being established through a process of free association that explores the network of signifiers in which it is embedded. The same principle applies to understanding racism’s “other scenes.” — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1289

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines overdetermination (shared dream image admitting many meanings via free association) and extends it to the analysis of racial fantasy.
• XREF: connects to: Racialization recruits deep psychic structures of feeling, not only beliefs — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1241; Psychoanalytic accounts of racism displace rather than escape reductionism — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1297; Universal-psychology accounts of racism substitute an alibi for explanation — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 634 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Psychoanalytic accounts of racism displace rather than escape reductionism #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1297
• Psychoanalytic accounts of racism reduce structural inequality to individual unconscious dynamics #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1275
• Blackness symbolizes Evil and Ugliness in white thought #exemplifies (0.85)
• Unconscious racism names how primordial feeling-structures become racialized #corroborates (0.85)
• Universal-psychology accounts of racism substitute an alibi for explanation #expands (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 634
• Postcolonial psychoanalytic theory builds ideal types detached from empirical reality of racism #expands (0.80)
• Psychoanalysis infers causality from mere association to yield absurd racism theories. #complicates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1301
• Psychoanalytic theories of racism have often been reductive and themselves racist #complicates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1297