The Reality Principle: Fanonian Undoing,Unlearning, and Decentering: A Discussion of “Fanon’s Vision of Embodied Racism for Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice”

This response argues that attention to the ideological misattunements in psychoanalytic work helps us move beyond the symbolic—and that which it hides—into the real, material implications for our patients. By discussing Waverley’s hyper-corporality especially in relation to Knoblauch, his White analyst, we can mark a real vs. symbolic recognition of the expansiveness of Whiteness and the ways in which it aims to recenter itself in our theory, practice, and training. More specifically, using Knoblauch’s (this issue) moving account of a moment of “misrecognition,” this response takes up the ways in which Whiteness materializes an ideological apparition that aims to invert the visible-invisible spectrum.     

Kant's Ethics and Duties to Oneself

Abstract: This paper investigates the nature and foundation of duties to oneself in Kant's moral theory. Duties to oneself embody the requirement of the formula of humanity that agents respect rational nature in them-selves as well as in others. So understood, duties to oneself are not subject to the sorts of conceptual objections often raised against duties to oneself; nor do these duties support objections that Kant's moral theory is overly demanding or produces agents who are preoccupied with their own virtue. Duties to oneself emerge as an essential and compelling part of Kant's moral theory.