Afropessimism, Lacanian theory and the myth of race (Sheldon George)

This talk, along with another given the same day by Derek Hook, was prepared at the request of Das Unbehagen. The Lacanian group had read and now sought Lacanian responses to Frank Wilderson’s Afropessimism. The talk suggests the partial ways that ideas of Afropessimism can be mapped onto George’s Lacanian reading of slavery as transforming the slave into a fantasy object a. It complicates Afropessimism’s reliance on notions of slavery as social death by discussing African American slaves’ use of religion to constitute the soul as their own fantasy notion of the object a. The talk suggests the possibility that the book Afropessimism contributes to, or possibly seeks to generate, a mythical rendering of race, where Lacan defines myth as a method of articulating one’s relation to lack. It asks what is at stake in grounding a vision of reality in notions of race. Does an Afropessimist sense of seeing racial reality for what it really is benefit the subject or bind the subject to an illusion that should be challenged?

[@Dragoull]

Thank you for this amazing video. It's great hearing theory put to practice like this.

[@uberhikari]

Sheldon George's argument is predicated on an equivocation fallacy. When Lacan says we are slaves to language, he's speaking metaphorically. When Afropessimists say the Black is a Slave they're following Orlando Patterson's work in "Slavery and Social Death." He's using two different understandings of 'slave' and treating them as if they're convergent.
Moreover, the Afropessimists don't simply say that White is human, they say that all other groups of people gain their humanity via the ontological inhumanity they impose on the Black. In other words, it's not Black vs White, it's Black vs non-Black.
Sheldon is misunderstanding these two critical points.

[@mikelistorti6612]

Indeed he is missing the junior partners dynamic as well as the Afropessimist definition of the slave requiring perpetual violence in order for the non-black to understand that kind of violence can befall me as well should I transgress. However the slave does not have to transgress in order to have violence beset upon. @derekhookonlacan

[@sayeddarwish]

Excellent as always, Sheldon!

[@derekhookonlacan]

Hi Robert, been thinking about your work recently. Derek

[@sayeddarwish]

@@derekhookonlacan thanks, Derek!

[@cheers6043]

Is there a manuscript of this I can find?

[@MarkAbramsContentsatYoutv]

I think the Lacanian approach has much promise on the subject . I myself am still far from understanding Lacan. W/ all that said: I think it would also be helpful to dialogue on the dynamics within this conversation between us overwhelmingly white listeners (is that a problem? why am I problematizing our being "overwhelmingly white"? what is that in Lacanian terms?) and Sheldon George. 1 moment I'd like to point out : when Sheldon said he didn't "want to let you off to easy".

[@derekhookonlacan]

He didn't want to let me off the Hook? In all seriousness though, thanks for your input. There are plans to further these debates about the role of whiteness and racial exclusion within psychoanalysis. My colleague Evan Malter is taking these up.
dasunbehagen.org

[@MarkAbramsContentsatYoutv]

@@derekhookonlacan Great to hear and thanks for the Hook up!

[@leststoner]

I need a dictionary

[@CountYourblessings0]

I find it interesting that Sheldon George asserts that race is a myth though, unknowingly, he mentions the true source of race when he refers to "mother Africa." Your race is a product of your long ancestry through prehistory in tens or hundreds of millennia of largely separate development in continental isolation: White people in Europe and the Caucasus, Asians in Asia and Black people in Africa.

[@aboubacaramine8689]

No that's not what race is. No African ever thought of themselves as "black" before the invasion of the continent by non-africans. No African ever thought of themselves as "African" for that matter before that process. We have great ancestry yes but that's not what Blackness is.
Blackness is the name this world has given us, the 'veil' that excludes us, traps us and also defines us to some degree.
In addressing this situation, we develop cultural practices that take deep inspiration in our african heritage but what makes them 'black' is not that particular ancestry but what we express through it.