Resistance is Justified: Psychoanalytic Resistance as a Refusal of the Coloniser’s Frames
The second lecture in the Mahmoud Alnaouq lecture series was presented by Angelita Biscotti at the University of Melbourne on 30 May 2024. This lecture explores the liberatory potential of psychoanalysis using decolonial reworkings of key concepts such as transference, resistance and free association. The lecture discusses two cases from Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi's Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine.
Angelita Biscotti is an academic at the University of Melbourne. Angelita's writing has been published in Sydney Review of Books, Overland, Jacobin, Liminal, Cordite, Australian Poetry Journal and many places. Angelita's photography coverage of the Free Palestine movement in Naarm has travelled widely and has been published in VICE Australia and Middle East Eye. Angelita's work has addressed psychoanalysis, intimacy and its impossibilities, and contemporary feminism.
Mahmoud Alnaouq was a recipient of an Australia Awards scholarship who had listed the University of Melbourne as his first preference for a Master of International Relations. He would have been with us on campus today, but the Zionist Israeli regime killed him, along with 19 members of his family, in the town of Deir Al Balah last October. The Mahmoud Alnaouq lecture series is held in his honour at Mahmoud's Hall, formerly known as Arts West, in the University of Melbourne. For more information about the lecture series and the pro-Palestine student movement at the University of Melbourne: instagram.com/unimelbforpalestine
Listen:
Audio recording of my decolonial psychoanalysis lecture for the Mahmoud Alnaouq Lecture series for the University of Melbourne For Palestine Gaza solidarity camp and Mahmoud’s Hall Collective. Audio capture and cover image by SanaShoots. Audio edit by Angelita Biscotti
View the Power Point slides here.
WORKS CITED
Freud, Sigmund. "Observations on Transference-Love." The Freud Reader, edited by Peter Gay, trans. James Strachey, Vintage Books, 1995, pp. 378 - 386.
Garland, Christian. “Negating That Which Negates Us: Marcuse, Critical Theory, and the New Politics of Refusal.” Radical Philosophy Review, vol. 16, no. 1, Jan. 2013, pp. 375–85.
Hagood, Erin & Tran, Duyminh. "Bridging Theory and Practice: An Interview with Angela Davis." The Platypus Affiliated Society, Playpus Review 138 July - August 2021.
Harcourt, Bernard, “Angela Davis on Marcuse, Adorno, and the German SDS Movement,” Revolution 13/13, Columbia University, March 21, 2022.
Johnson, Barbara. "Apostrophe, Animation and Abortion." The Barbara Johnson Reader: The Surprise of Otherness,edited by Melissa Feuerstein, Bill Johnson González, Lili Porten and Keja L. Valens, Duke University 2014, pp. 217 - 234.
Literary Hub, “Angela Davis on Protest, 1968, and Her Old Teacher, Herbert Marcuse,” LitHub, April 13, 2019.
Marcuse, Herbert. Reason and Revolution. Routledge Classics, 2023.
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. The White Possessive : Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
Salah, Trish. Wanting In Arabic. 2nd Edition, Mawenzi House, 2013.
Sheehi, Lara & Sheehi, Stephen. Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine. Routledge, 2022.
Simpson, Audra. Mohawk Interruptus : Political Life across the Borders of Settler States. Durham, 2014.
Tuck, Eve & Yang, K. Wayne, “Decolonization is Not A Metaphor,” Indigeneity, Education and Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1 - 40.
Wolfe, Patrick, “Settler-Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 387 - 409.
FURTHER READING
Puar, Jasbir K. The Right to Maim : Debility, Capacity, Disability. Duke University Press, 2017.
Said, Edward W. Freud and the Non-European. Verso, 2003.
Tallbear, Kim, “Identity is a Poor Substitute for Relating,” in Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies,Routledge, 2020, pp. 467 – 478.
Vergès, Françoise, A Decolonial Feminism. Pluto Press, 2021.