How the Mind and World were made Black and White

1. How the Mind and World were made Black and White Farhad Dalal Melbourne, 2008 The content of the lectures were based on the arguments from the book ‘Race, Colour and the Process of Racialization: New Perspectives from Group Analysis, Psychoanalysis & Sociology (Brunner-Routledge 2002)

2. Look Behave Feel External Ext/Int Internal Race Culture Ethnicity Physical differences Social habits Sense of belonging

3. For though a child is not born conscious, his mind is not a tabula rasa. The child is born with a definite brain, and the brain of an English child will not work like that of an Australian black fellow but in the way of a modern English person. The brain is born with a finished structure…It has been built up in the course of millions of years and represents a history of which it is a result. Naturally it carries with it the traces of that history, exactly like the body, and if you grope down into the structure of the mind you naturally find traces of the archaic mind (Jung, CW, Vol. xviii, p. 41).

4. Three Problems with ‘culture’ • The illusion of cultures as monoliths • The illusion of cultures as consensual • The illusion of cultures being mutually exclusive

5. 0 AD 500AD 1000AD 1500AD 2000AD Dirt on body Neutral: colour, etc.. Dirt Death.. Evil Illicit Uses of ‘Black’ The emotions Neutral: clear, colour, silver... Symbolic of spiritual purity 71AD Endearment... Uses of ‘White’ Legitimate (white rent) Black and White applied to people Terms increasingly used as nouns from the 16th C on; they become racialized, and from now on are used to name ‘types’ of people. Initially, used primarily as adjectives (A white person Tom, could be called Black Tom, because of the colour of his hair, say)

6. Three semantic patterns 1. Things named black becoming negative. 2. Things decreed negative becoming black 3. Things retrospectively blackened.

7. Freud 1st instinct theory: self preservative and sexual instincts. Difference = trigger/provocation 2nd instinct theory: life and death instincts Difference = container Object – innocent

8. Narcissism of Minor Differences Small difference Big Antagonism Big Difference low antagonism

9. Narcissism of major differences • ‘of two neighbouring towns each is the others most jealous rival... Closely related races keep one another at arms length… We are no longer astonished that greater differences should lead to an almost insuperable repugnance, such as the Gallic people feel for the German, the Aryan for the Semite, and the white races for the coloured. (Freud 1921, pg.101; italics added).

10. Narcissism of Minor Differences Small difference Big Antagonism Narcissism of Major Differences Big Difference Even Bigger antagonism

11. ‘the understanding of [the individual’s] personality is the foundation for the understanding of social life (Klein 1959, p.247) • ‘all sociological problems are ultimately reducible to problems of individual psychology.’ (Fairbairn, 1935, p.241). • ‘the clue to social and group psychology is the psychology of the individual’ (Winnicott, 1958a, p.15).

12. ‘the understanding of [the individual’s] personality is the foundation for the understanding of social life Klein • ‘the understanding of social life is the foundation for the understanding of [the individual’s] personality ‘all sociological problems are ultimately reducible to problems of individual psychology.’ Fairbairn • ‘all problems of individual psychology are ultimately reducible to sociological problems ‘the clue to social and group psychology is the psychology of the individual’ Winnicott • the clue to the psychology of the individual is social and group psychology

13. Psychoanalytic Explanations of Racism • Projection • Similarity and Difference • Developmental Malfunctions • External not a cause

14. Radical Group Analysis • Power • The Social and the Psychological • The Individual and the Social • Belonging • Identities in the shoe shop

15. The Shoe Shop • Brown shoes>Red shoes • Stilettos, brogues, etc. Stilettos, brogues, etc. • Similarity difference Similarity conscious • Differences similarities Differences unconscious

16. ‘concepts are purely differential and defined not by their positive content but negatively by their relations with the other terms of the system. Their most precise characteristic is in being what others are not’. De Sassure (1959)

17. Othering an other The Other

18. ‘[in] discussing ‘racial’ problems one is apt to put the cart before the horse. It is argued, as a rule, that people perceive others as belonging to another group because the colour of their skin is different. It would be more to the point if one asked how it came to pass in this world that one has got into the habit of perceiving people with another skin colour as belonging to a different group.’ (Elias, 1976, p.xlvii)