Discursive Psychology and the “New Racism”

This paper addresses a range of theoretical issues which are the topic of recent social psychological and related research concerned with the “new racism.” We critically examine examples of such research in order to explore how analyst concerns with anti-racist political activism are surreptitiously privileged in explanations of social interaction, often at the expense of and in preference to the work of examining participants' own formulations of those same activities. Such work is contrasted with an ethnomethodologically-informed, discursive psychology which seeks to the explore how participants' talk is responsively oriented to foreclosing the same sort of critique implicitly made available in new racism research as a way for speakers to account for their own and others' activities within the controversy which that same body of research seeks to settle. More specifically, we examine how the rhetorical context of controversy surrounding race and racism is imminent to the situated activities whereby speakers provide for its relevance and not, as assumed in new racism research, some independent factor affecting that interaction. Finally, we conclude with an analysis of an episode of talk recorded in a social science interview having as its topic the nature of cross-cultural contact in which the participants take up the issue of racism as a way of managing the conflicting demands with which they are confronted in accounting for their involvement as Western expatriates living in the Middle East. Throughout our analysis of these materials, the issue of racism is approached for how it features as a participant concern, raised by speakers in the course of attending to the immediate situated interactional business in which they are engaged. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Kant's Synthetic and Analytic Method in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Distinction between Philosophical and Mathematical Syntheses

This article addresses Kant's distinction between a synthetic and an analytic method in philosophy. I will first consider how some commentators have accounted for Kant's distinction and analyze some passages in which Kant defined the analytic and the synthetic method. I will suggest that confusion about Kant's distinction arises because he uses it in at least two different senses. I will then identify a specific way in which Kant accounts for this distinction when he is differentiating between mathematical and philosophical syntheses. I will examine Kant's arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason with the latter sense of the distinction in mind. I will evaluate if he uses the analytic or the synthetic method and if the synthetic method is able to identify, without a previous consideration of some sort of given knowledge, sufficient conditions for deriving some aspects of our knowledge.     

‘Pre‐discursive’ racism

This paper makes the case that discourse analytic approaches in social psychology are not adequate to the task of apprehending racism in its bodily, affective and pre‐symbolic dimensions. We are hence faced with a dilemma: if discursive psychology is inadequate when it comes to theorizing ‘pre‐discursive’ forms of racism, then any attempts to develop an anti‐racist strategy from such a basis will presumably exhibit the same limitations. Suggesting a rapprochement of discursive and psychoanalytic modes of analysis, I argue that Kristeva's theory of abjection provides a means of understanding racism as both historically/socially constructed and as existing at powerfully embodied, visceral and subliminal dimensions of subjectivity. Kristeva's theory of abjection provides us with an account of a ‘pre‐discursive’ (that is, a bodily, affective, pre‐symbolic) racism, a form of racism that ‘comes before words’, and that is routed through the logics of the body and its anxieties of distinction, separation and survival. This theory enables us, moreover, to join together the expulsive reactions of a racism of the body to both the personal racism of the ego and the broader discursive racisms of the prevailing social order. Moreover, it directs our attention to the fact that discourses of racism are always locked into a relationship with ‘pre‐discursive’ processes which condition and augment every discursive action, which escape the codifications of discourse and which drive the urgency of its attempts at containment. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distinguishing Agent-Relativity from Agent-Neutrality

The agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction is one of the most important in contemporary moral theory. Yet providing an adequate formal account of it has proven to be difficult. In this article I defend a new formal account of the distinction, one that avoids various problems faced by other accounts. My account is based on an influential account of the distinction developed by McNaughton and Rawling. I argue that their approach is on the right track but that it succumbs to two serious objections. I then show how to formulate a new account that follows the key insights of McNaughton and Rawling's approach yet avoids the two objections.     

The Dream Sense,Emergent Clinical Process,and the Question of Symmetry: Reply to Brown and Colombo

In recent years I have become interested in Bion and neo-Bionian field theory, but the origin of my interest in dreaming does not lie in scholarly or clinical sources. The source of the idea of the dream sense is my own experience. After addressing that point, I reject what appears to be Colombo’s impression (this issue) that detailed inquiry is necessarily the basis of interpersonal and relational clinical practice, and then take issue with Brown’s understanding of expressive participation in relational thinking (this issue). Responding to Brown’s wish that I offer more detail about my own clinical process, I present an overview of my understanding of the way I work. I conclude by addressing the understandings offered by the discussants of symmetry in the analytic relationship, and offering more details of my own.     

Wittgenstein and Nonsense: Psychologism,Kantianism, and the Habitus

This paper is a critical examination of Wittgenstein's view of the limits of intelligibility. In it I criticize standard analytic readings of Wittgenstein as an advocate of transcendental or behaviourist theses in epistemology; and I propose an alternative interpretation of Wittgenstein's view as a social contextualism that transcends the false dichotomy between Kantianism and psychologism. I argue that this social contextualism is strikingly similar to the social account of epistemic practices developed by Pierre Bourdieu. Through a comparison between Wittgenstein's and Bourdieu's view and an analysis of the notion of habitus , I try to show how social contextualism can account for the distinction between sense and nonsense without falling into transcendental constructivism or social behaviourism.     

Hegel on Kant's Analytic–Synthetic Distinction

In this paper, I argue, first, that Hegel defended a version of the analytic/synthetic distinction—that, indeed, his version of the distinction deserves to be called Kantian. For both Kant and Hegel, the analytic/synthetic distinction can be explained in terms of the discursive character of cognition: insofar as our cognition is discursive, its most basic form can be articulated in terms of a genus/species tree. The structure of that tree elucidates the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. Second, I argue that Hegel has an interesting and so far unexplored argument for the analytic/synthetic distinction: Hegel argues that the systematic relationship between concepts expressed in a genus/species tree can only be expressed through synthetic judgments. Third and finally, I explore some of the implications that the arguments in the first two parts of the essay have for understanding the way in which Hegel differs from Kant. I argue that Hegel accepts Kant's point that discursive cognition cannot be used to cognize the absolute. However, Hegel thinks that we can, nevertheless, cognize the absolute. I explore the character of this non‐discursive cognition and argue that we can understand Hegel's glosses on this form of cognition—as simultaneously analytic and synthetic and as having a circular structure—through contrasting it with his account of discursive cognition. As a consequence, I argue that we must give up on attempts to understand ‘the dialectical method’ and ‘speculative cognition’ on the model of discursive cognition.     

You’re Better Respected When You Carry Yourself as a Man: Black Men’s Personal Accounts of the Down Low “lifestyle”

Although the notion of a down low life style, called various things at various times, has a long history in the black community, the past few years have been marked by an exponential increase in attention of this phenomenon in both the mainstream press and scholarly work. However, much of this work has focused on exploring whether men on the down low present a unique threat for HIV infection to black women. Currently, there exist very few scholarly works exploring the lives of black men who have sex with men and women that specifically address their own experiences living on the down low or how these men personally define what it means to be on the down low. In this article, we explore why black men who have sex with men and black men who have sex with men and women, including those who self-identify as gay, bisexual or as being on the down low, come to use the down low label and what it means to them to be on the down low.     

Our Theories,Our Selves: Commentary on Paper by Ruth Gruenthal

Ruth Gruenthal invites us to explore the dynamics embedded in disengagement. She suggests that this very concept is an oxymoron; by virtue of the fact that the patient is in treatment she is, in fact, engaged. Gruenthal focuses on disengagement's self-sustaining function, noting that it represents an attempt to regulate emotional distance while still retaining a connection to the other. Recognizing how difficult work with withdrawn patients can be, Gruenthal suggests that theory can actually shift the analyst's negative countertransference response. Implicitly she challenges the relational assumption that active engagement around the analyst's subjectivity always lies at the center of therapeutic process. I offer my own take on the dynamics at the heart of Gruenthal's treatment of Helen, proposing that neither disengagement nor containment can be accounted for by the patient or analyst alone. I explore how theory helps us manage our subjectivity while also embodying it.     

Toward a transnational history of the social sciences

Historical accounts of the social sciences have too often accepted local or national institutions as a self-evident framework of analysis, instead of considering them as being embedded in transnational relations of various kinds. Evolving patterns of transnational mobility and exchange cut through the neat distinction between the local, the national, and the inter-national, and thus represent an essential component in the dynamics of the social sciences, as well as a fruitful perspective for rethinking their historical development. In this programmatic outline, it is argued that a transnational history of the social sciences may be fruitfully understood on the basis of three general mechanisms, which have structured the transnational flows of people and ideas in decisive ways: (a) the functioning of international scholarly institutions, (b) the transnational mobility of scholars, and (c) the politics of trans-national exchange of nonacademic institutions. The article subsequently examines and illustrates each of these mechanisms.     

Kant,Oppression, and the Possibility of Nonculpable Failures to Respect Oneself

I argue that Kant's ethical framework cannot countenance a certain kind of failure to respect oneself that can occur within oppressive social contexts. Kant's assumption that any person, qua rational being, has guaranteed epistemic access to the moral law as the standard of good action and the capacity to act upon this standard makes autonomy an achievement within the individual agent's power, but this is contrary to a feminist understanding of autonomy as a relational achievement that can be thwarted by the systematic attack on autonomy that occurs within oppressive social conditions. Insofar as Kant's negative duty of self‐respect is unable to accommodate the ways immersion in oppressive social environments can warp an individual's understanding of what she is owed and capable of as a moral agent, it perpetuates the cruelty of unjust social systems in the guise of respecting individual autonomy. I conclude by considering Carol Hay's argument that those who are oppressed have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression, in order to explore how this limitation in how Kant conceives of the duty to respect the self may reach expression in contemporary ethical theory inspired by Kant.     

Reduction,externalism and immanence in Husserl and Heidegger

This paper argues that the Husserl–Heidegger relationship is systematically misunderstood when framed in terms of a distinction between internalism and externalism. Both philosophers, it is argued, employ the phenomenological reduction to immanence as a fundamental methodological instrument. After first outlining the assumptions regarding inner and outer and the individual and the social from which recent epistemological interpretations of phenomenology begin, I turn to the question of Husserl’s internalism. I argue that Husserl can only be understood as an internalist on the assumption that immanence equates with internal. This, however, is not the case as can be seen once the reduction is understood not as setting aside the existence of the world, but rather a reflection on its meaning. Turning to Heidegger, I argue that his commitment to a form of the phenomenological reduction precludes him from being either a semantic or a social externalist. The place of authenticity and the first person perspective in his work derive from his phenomenological commitments, which can be seen in his accounts of discourse and language and of falling (Verfallen). I then go on to briefly outline a more plausible basis for understanding the difference between Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenologies in terms of their respective emphases on logic and on poetics.     

On commerce,institutions, and underdevelopment: A comparative perspective

There are ample sources on the exuberance of economic life and the organization of society. Eventually the Middle East and China lost ground to Western Europe and Japan. This has been subject to much work and scholarly activity. Considering the multiplicity of explanations, in this paper I focus on the interactions among power dimensions, activities of various social actors, cultural forces, and how these interactions influenced formation of certain institutions and inhibited others. In particular, I allude to the role of the political center in inhibiting land and commerce-based foci of power in the East, and how this inhibition prevented formation of institutions conducive to economic development. In addition to international economics, he is interested in medieval history and its impact on modern institutions of economic and political life. Dr. Dibooglu was the co-Guest Editor of the KT&P theme issue “Endo/Exogenous,” Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2001. He may be reached at 〈dibo@siu.edu〉. He would like to thank Richard Grabowski for his helpful comments on an earlier draft but states that all errors or omissions are his own.     

Own-Race-Absent Racism

Abstract

I propose that a distinction can be drawn between two fundamental kinds of racism: own-race-present racism and own-race-absent racism. In own-racepresent racism, the race of the racist figures as a term in her racist thinking; in own-race-absent racism it does not. While own-race-present racism might conform readily to commonsense understandings of racism, own-race-absent racism less clearly does. I provide evidence that these two kinds are there to be identified and raise considerations regarding the benefits, both theoretical and practical, of adopting the less-obvious concept of own-race-absent racism.     

RACISM, SOCIAL JUSTICE, AND INTERRACIAL COALITIONS

Is racism in the United States alive and well? Do African Americans still experience alienation and social injustice because of racism? What are the various proposals that have been tendered by conservatives and liberals for overcoming racism? Can interracial coalitions be used as an effective tool for combating racism? I attempt to answer these questions in part by offering an analysis of Cornel West's interracial coalition proposal in Race Matters.     

What is “Good” Technique? How to Teach it? Personal Reflections on Psychoanalytic Training

There is an intense interest in the interactional process across the varying psychoanalytic schools of thought. The analytic relationship itself, in all of its complexity, is the vehicle for our work. These advances raise the question of what we mean by technique these days, a question that has implications for analytic training and supervision. In this paper, the author reflects back on his analytic training experience, specifically at how two of his supervisors regarded technique, how it was taught, and the various ways in which it was communicated. In looking back at these supervisory experiences, the author examines how these teaching analysts embodied some of what they had to teach. The author shows what was mutative across these training experiences in terms of what was needed in order to grow—what facilitated his own development as an analyst and contributed towards the cultivation of his own style.     

Fight the power: A heuristic exploration of systemic racism through dreams

Systemic racism, like many forms of difference and diversity, is poorly understood within the realms of counselling and psychotherapy. Whereas our profession has shied away from using its skills to explore the meaning and relevance of racism, this author over a number of years has studied many forms of intersectional otherness and recognises that racism is as much a relational experience between subject and other, both internally and externally. This paper therefore explores how an internalised experience of systemic racism can be understood through client work and dreamwork, offering ideas as to how the dreams of the racialised other may be understood; the symbolism, and the relevance of the racial complex hidden within them.     

‘I have not witnessed it personally myself,but…’: Epistemics in managing talk on racism against immigrants in Ireland

Social psychologists who study racism or prejudice argue that various versions of these are constructed in ways to suppress or minimise their relevance. However, researchers have not particularly examined how knowledge-claims about racism can also be variously made or negotiated in attending to the relevance of racism. We offer such an examination through a discursive psychological analysis of interview talk with Irish nationals on immigration, since in these settings issues of immigration and racism are not readily relevant. Findings show that participants treated how knowledge of racism can be accessed and who has the rights to make knowledge-claims about racism, as relevant. Epistemic access and rights were negotiated in ways that showed sensitivity to possibilities for suppressing alternative claims about racism. These findings are discussed in relation to current social psychological and discursive approaches to racism.