White Men Aren'tPsychoanalytic theory has traditionally taken sexual difference to be the fundamental organizing principle of human subjectivity. White Men Aren’t contests that assumption, arguing that other forms of difference—particularly race—are equally important to the formation of identity. Thomas DiPiero shows how whiteness and masculinity respond to various, complex cultural phenomena through a process akin to hysteria and how differences traditionally termed “racial” organize psychic, social, and political life as thoroughly as sexual difference does. White masculinity is fraught with anxiety, according to DiPiero, because it hinges on the unstable construction of white men’s cultural hegemony. White men must always struggle against the loss of position and the fear of insufficiency—against the specter of what they are not. Drawing on the writings of Freud, Lacan, Butler, Foucault, and Kaja Silverman, as well as on biology, anthropology, and legal sources, Thomas DiPiero contends that psychoanalytic theory has not only failed to account for the role of race in structuring identity, it has in many ways deliberately ignored it. Reading a wide variety of texts—from classical works such as Oedipus Rex and The Iliad to contemporary films including Boyz 'n' the Hood and Grand Canyon—DiPiero reveals how the anxiety of white masculine identity pervades a surprising range of Western thought, including such ostensibly race-neutral phenomena as Englightenment forms of reason. |
Contents
Reading Sophocles Testing Freud | 23 |
Missing Links | 52 |
Its Not What You Think | 102 |
Copyright | |
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African American argues articulation believe Buffon Butler castration causality cause chapter clitoris color concerning constituted construction correlates cultural defined desire discourse dominant early modern edited eighteenth century Encyclopédie Enlightenment European example fact father Freud function fundamental gender Goux Greek hegemonic hegemonic narrative Hottentots human hysteria hysteric Ibid ideal identify identity ideological Jacques Lacan Jane Gallop Jean Stefancic Judith Butler Klux Klan knowledge Ku Klux Klan Lacan Lacanian Laius logic Mack male genitals master signifiers meaning morphological myth natural Negro nonwhite observers Oedipus complex Oedipus Rex Oedipus the King organ particular penis phallic phallus phenomenon political position produced psychoanalysis question race racial reason relation relationship Routledge seems sexual difference Sigmund Freud simply skin Slavoj Žižek social Sophocles sort specific structure symbolic theory things thinking tion traditional trans University Press white male white masculinity Wiegman women writes York Žižek