There is, within psychoanalysis, an increased interest in the psychoanalytically inspired work of the decolonial thinker Frantz Fanon.  However, Fanon’s engagement with psychoanalysis is partial: there are a great many other theories (philosophical, psychiatric, literary) that he moves on to, particularly after his classic Black Skin, White Masks, and his work benefits from being connected to the ideas of other theorists.  For example, Fanon’s discussion of racism in Black Skin, White Masks is grounded in the concepts of the “European collective unconscious” and racial envy (of the white colonizer), both of which can be extended utilizing the Lacanian ideas of fantasy and jouissance.  This talk will explore Fanon’s distinctively psychoanalytic contributions to the understanding of anti-Blackness along with some possible Lacanian augmentations and extensions of these ideas.

Derek Hook is a professor of psychology and a clinical supervisor at Duquesne University and an Extraordinary Professor of Psychology at the University of Pretoria.  He is the editor (with Calum Neill) of the Palgrave Lacan Series and, with Calum Neill and Stijn Vanheule, of the four-volume Reading Lacan’s Ecrits.  He edited, with Sheldon George, the collection Lacan on Race, and, with Leswin Laubscher and Miraj Desai, Fanon, Phenomenology, and Psychology.  A key research interest is racism, particularly in (post)apartheid South Africa.  He began his analytic training in London, at the Center for Freudian Analysis and Research, and has written extensively on the clinical and cultural dimensions of Lacanian psychoanalysis.  He runs a YouTube channel with lectures on Lacanian Psychoanalysis.

Practitioner and General Public: $40  |  Students: Free