Sociological explanations of racism tend to concentrate on the structures and dynamics of modern life that facilitate discrimination and hierarchies of inequality. In doing so, they often fail to address why racial hatred arises (as opposed to how it arises) as well as to explain why it can be so visceral and explosive in character. Bringing together sociological perspectives with psychoanalytic concepts and tools, this text offers a clear, accessible and thought-provoking synthesis of varieties of theory, with the aim of clarifying the complex character of racism, discrimination and social exclusion in the contemporary world.

What does it mean to talk about everyday racism, and why should we do so? Racism and Everyday Life brings together the sociologies of racism and everyday life in a new way in order to reflect on these questions. Smith argues that racism and everyday life are not just 'act' and 'context' respectively, but rather they are part of the making of each other. Using a variety of historical and contemporary examples, this book draws on the pioneering insights of W.E.B. Du Bois and other writers in order to explore the interwoven relationship between racism and the everyday.

This edited volume draws upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to examine the conscious and unconscious forces underlying race as a social formation, conceptualizing race, racial identity, and racism in ways that go beyond traditional modes of psychoanalytic thought. Featuring contributions by Lacanian scholars from diverse geographical and disciplinary contexts, chapters span a wide breadth of topics, including white nationalism and contemporary debates over confederate monuments; emergent theories of race rooted in Afropessimism and postcolonialism; analyses of racism in apartheid and American slavery; clinical reflections on Latinx and other racialized patients; and applications of Lacan’s concepts of the lamella, drive and sexuation to processes of racialization. The collection both reorients readers’ understandings of race through its deployment of Lacanian theory and redefines the Lacanian subject through its theorizing of subjectivity in relation to race, racism and racial identification. Lacan and Race will be a definitive text for psychoanalytic theorists and contemporary scholars of race, appealing to readers across the fields of psychology, cultural studies, humanities, politics, and sociology.

Racism's external forms, from racial assault to petty discrimination, are readily recognized. However, its internal dimensions are easily overlooked: how can we understand what happens in the mind of those engaged in or experiencing racism? This book explores the inner relationship between the self and the socially stereotyped – 'racial' – other, providing a clinically derived model of how racist dynamics play out in the mind. Presenting an original theory of the psychology of racism, it: - Reviews and analyses the existing literature on racism and psychoanalysis, including an extensive study of Frantz Fanon's psychological model - Presents new, in-depth clinical observations of racist interchanges in the consulting room and group settings, and new perspectives on such interchanges in the outside world - Theorizes the way in which the race/class divide is internalized and operates, and considers the relationship between individual and institutional racism - Illustrates how racism can be addressed in group and individual settings Arguing that we cannot work with problems of racism without understanding the inner processes that underpin it, this book is an indispensable tool for trainee and experienced psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and counsellors. Its formulations are directly relevant to professionals and academics working across the boundaries of race in health, medical and social service settings.

Is racial conflict determined by biology or society? So many conflicts appear to be caused by racial and ethnic differences; for example, the cities of Britain and America are regularly affected by race riots. It is argued by socio-biologists and some schools of psychoanalysis that our instincts are programmed to hate those different to us by evolutionary and developmental mechanisms. This book argues against this line, proposing an alternative drawing on insights from diverse disciplines including anthropology, social psychology and linguistics, to give power-relations a critical explanatory role in the generation of hatreds. Farhad Dalal argues that people differentiate between races in order to make a distinction between the 'haves' and 'must-not-haves', and that this process is cognitive, emotional and political rather than biological. Examining the subject over the past thousand years, Race, Colour and the Processes of Racialisation covers: * psychoanalytic and other theories of racism * a new theorisation of racism based on group analytic theory * a general theory of difference based on the works of Fanon, Elias, Matte-Blanco and Foulkes * application of this theory to race and racism. Farhad Dalal concludes that the structures of society are reflected in the structures of the psyche, and both of these are colour coded. This book will be invaluable to students, academics and practitioners in the areas of psychoanalysis, group analysis, psychotherapy and counselling.

Cheng proposes that racial identification is itself already a melancholic act--a social category that is imaginatively supported through a dynamic of loss and compensation, by which the racial other is at once rejected and retained. Using psychoanalytic theories on mourning and melancholia as inroads into her subject, Cheng offers a closely observed and carefully reasoned account of the minority experience as expressed in works of art by, and about, Asian-Americans and African-Americans. She argues that the racial minority and dominant American culture both suffer from racial melancholia and that this insight is crucial to a productive reimagining of progressive politics.