Psych/Post Colonial World

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

War, more specifically the Second World War, has become the most evocative emblem of modernity. In a decisive way it signaled a transition in the register of knowledge itself, i.e., what collapsed comprehensively was the nineteenth-century belief that knowledge/ science/ ‘progress’ would bring an end to war. However in his famous debate with Einstein in 1932, Freud’s answer to the question ‘Why War?’ resonates with profound ambiguities. For Freud, war precipitates a crisis of knowledge; it leads to strange and terrifying blurring of boundaries between reality/ fantasy (illusion), rationality/ paranoia, science/ speculation, and also critically, to ideas of stable sexual difference. Yet curiously here Freud writes not only of the futility but also the necessity of war. In fact, for Freud the ambivalence of war mirrors the fundamental ambivalence of culture/ civilization itself, as we have imagined it so far. The course will aim to use psychoanalysis as a tool for the analysis of political issues --- nationalism, citizenship, power, ‘culture.’ It will explore the many ways in which Freud’s vision enables us to connect with and question the horrific violence of our times. We will especially highlight the relevance of Freud for one major category of human beings who were represented by the master-narrative of the Enlightenment as incapable of representing themselves: the colonized races, (women and children being the other two).