1st Edition

Decolonial Psychoanalysis Towards Critical Islamophobia Studies

By Robert Beshara Copyright 2019
    174 Pages 20 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    174 Pages 20 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    In this provocative and necessary book, Robert K. Beshara uses psychoanalytic discursive analysis to explore the possibility of a genuinely anti-colonial critical psychology. Drawing on postcolonial and decolonial approaches to Islamophobia, this book enhances understandings of Critical Border Thinking and Lacanian Discourse Analysis, alongside other theoretico-methodological approaches.

    Using a critical decolonial psychology approach to conceptualize everyday Islamophobia, the author examines theoretical resources situated within the discursive turn, such as decoloniality/transmodernity, and carries out an archeology of (counter)terrorism, a genealogy of the conceptual Muslim, and a Žižekian ideology critique. Conceiving of Decolonial Psychoanalysis as one theoretical resource for Critical Islamophobia Studies (CIS), the author also applies Lacanian Discourse Analysis to extracts from interviews conducted with US Muslims to theorize their ethico-political subjectivity and considers a politics of resistance, adversarial aesthetics, and ethics of liberation.

    Essential to any attempt to come to terms with the legacy of racism in psychology, and the only critical psychological study on Islamophobia in the United States, this is a fascinating read for anyone interested in a critical approach to Islamophobia.

    LIST OF FIGURES

    PREFACE

    SERIES EDITOR FOREWORD

    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    1. THEORIZING AND RESEARCHING ISLAMOPHOBIA/ISLAMOPHILIA IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

    2. THE MASTER’S DISCOURSE: AN ARCHEOLOGY OF (COUNTER)TERRORISM AND A GENEALOGY OF THE CONCEPTUAL MUSLIM

    3. THE UNIVERSITY DISCOURSE: THE PSYCHOLOGIZATION OF ISLAMOPHOBIA

    4. THE HYSTERIC’S DISCOURSE: EPISTEMIC RESISTANCE, OR US MUSLIMS AS ETHICAL SUBJECTS

    5. THE ANALYST’S DISCOURSE: ONTIC RESISTANCE, OR US MUSLIMS AS POLITICAL SUBJECTS

    6. TOWARDS A RADICAL MASTER: FROM DECOLONIAL PSYCHOANALYSIS TO LIBERATION PRAXIS

    REFERENCES

    Biography

    Robert K. Beshara is a critical psychologist, interested in theorizing subjectivity vis-à-vis ideology through radical qualitative research (e.g., discourse analysis). In addition to being a scholar-activist, he is a fine artist with a background in film, theater, and music. He holds two terminal degrees: a Ph.D. in Psychology: Consciousness and Society from the University of West Georgia and an M.F.A. in Independent Film and Digital Imaging from Governors State University, Illinois. He currently works as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Northern New Mexico College. For more information visit: www.robertbeshara.com