Decolonial Psychoanalysis by Beshara Robert;

Author:Beshara, Robert;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

FIGURE 3.4 Transmodernity (adapted from Dussel, 2002).

[T]he concept of ‘post’-modernity … indicates that there is a process that emerges ‘from within’ modernity and reveals a state of crisis within globalization. ‘Trans’-modernity, in contrast, demands a whole new interpretation of modernity in order to include moments that were never incorporated into the European version. Subsuming the best of globalized European and North American modernity, ‘trans’-modernity affirms ‘from without’ the essential components of modernity’s own excluded cultures in order to develop a new civilization for the twenty-first century.

(pp.223–224, emphasis in original)

This difference between (post)modernity and transmodernity parallels the one between (post)coloniality and decoloniality. It is the reason why we need to move from “postcolonial psychoanalysis” (Hook, 2008) and towards what I have been calling decolonial psychoanalysis: “The de-colonial shift, in other words, is a project of de-linking while post-colonial criticism and theory is a project of scholarly transformation within the academy” (Mignolo, 2007, p.452). To put it differently, delinking is a “praxis of liberation” (Dussel, 1998/2013).

In the context of the WOT discourse, as a master’s discourse, I have been theorizing US Muslims as having the potential to embody a counter-hegemonic subjectivity (~S) condensed in the ideological fantasy figure of the conceptual Muslim (a), as object-cause of desire. The conceptual Muslim is legitimated by the objectal Muslim (a), as an empirical object of knowledge in the university discourse. This ~S can be broken down into two subject positions (Greimas, 1968): not-counterterrorist (~S1) and not-terrorist (~S2). However, in addition to positivizing this negativity, it is crucial to keep in mind that “exteriority is not pure negativity. It is the positivity rooted in a tradition distinct from the Modern” (Dussel, 2012, p.50, emphasis in original). I would argue that the positivity that Dussel (2012) is referring to is none other than jouissance (Miller, 1998): “Jouissance is precisely what grounds the alterity of the Other when there is no Other of the Other” (p.125). This Other jouissance (JA), I have been calling divine-jouissance (cf. Lacan, 1991/2007, p.66).

In the case of US Muslims, their counter-hegemonic subjectivity (~S) is rooted in the tradition of Islam. Islam, along with Other cultures, can be the basis for constructing a new transmodern system, which synthesizes: “the innovative interpellation before modernity,” “the subsumption of modernity’s positivity,” and “the affirmation of the other in its exteriority” (Dussel, 2002, p.235, emphasis in original). This new transmodern system would go beyond both “‘postmodernity’ (the limit of modernity and of totality)” and “the inclusion of the other into the same (the old system)” (Dussel, 2002, p.235, emphasis in original). Decoloniality works

toward a vision of human life that is not dependent upon or structured by the forced imposition of one ideal of society over those that differ, which is what modernity/coloniality does and, hence, where decolonization of the mind should begin.

(Mignolo, 2007, p.459, emphasis added)

In sum, decoloniality/transmodernity is an ethico-political alternative to both Liberal multiculturalism and Conservative nationalism, mainly because of its Radical emphasis on “pluriversality as a universal project” (Mignolo, 2007, pp.452–453, emphasis in original). The

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