Psychoanalysis as an ethical-political antiracist tool

a clinic of recognition

Abstract

Born from the elaborations of a research collective operating under the name “Psychoanalysis and Politics”, this text seeks to think psychoanalysis beyond its traditional clinical domain, conceiving it as an ethical-political device committed to the urgency of antiracist engagement. Drawing on Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition - whose core lies in understanding social suffering as an expression of recognition deficits - we articulate this perspective with the notion of a “clinic of recognition” as developed by Isildinha Baptista Nogueira. In doing so, we aim to inscribe Brazilian structural racism as a specific form of symbolic and subjective violence, indicative of a selective and exclusionary regime of recognition. In doing so, we propose a reflection on a psychoanalytic listening that breaks with the foundations of colonial rationality, allowing psychoanalysis to inhabit the present time not as a reflection of its tradition, but as a vector of its transgression.