This seminar is a psychoanalytic enquiry into the forces of racialization and ideology and their effects on cultural and clinical practices. With Derek Hook, who will be joining us by media link from Pittsburgh and whose work has majorly contributed to the psychoanalysis of identity, racism, and colonialism, the seminar considers the reification of thinking and the tyrannizing effects of ideology and its fantasies for culture and clinical practices.

This seminar builds upon an earlier FLi seminar "Why War? A Psychoanalytic Enquiry" in December 2023 which explored what psychoanalysis could offer in considering war, conflict and opposition in light of distressing recent global events. A call was made for further work on racism and ideology which this seminar takes this up. All are welcome and attendance at the previous seminar is not necessary. The event is a hybrid event combining a talk, Q&A and discussion with both in-person attendance (limited nos. due to room size) and remote attendance possible.

Biography

Derek Hook is a scholar and a practitioner of psychoanalysis with expertise in the areas of Lacanian psychoanalysis, post-colonial theory (the work of Frantz Fanon in particular), the psychology of racism and critical social psychology. Derek has taught on Lacanian clinical and social theory in a variety of global and organizational from South Africa (University of the Witwatersrand, University of Pretoria) to the UK (Birkbeck College at the University of London, London School of Economics) and the US (Duquesne University) over the last 20 years.

In addition to co-editing the successful Palgrave Lacan Series with Calum Neill (which has published 16 titles in the past five years) he is one of three editors (along with Stijn Vanheule and Calum Neill) of the landmark 3-volume series Reading Lacan's Écrits (Routledge). His books include Six Moments in Lacan (2017) and his recent co-edited collection Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory (Routledge, 2022).