Denaturalisation and Liberation Psychology
Implications for Memory and Political Imagination
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6431983 |
|---|---|
| Authors | N Malherbe (0000-0002-4968-4058, Institute for Social and Health Sciences University of South Africa & South African Medical Research Council‐University of South Africa Violence Injury and Social Asymmetries Research Unit Cape Town South Africa, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8308 • E-ISSN: 1468-5914 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/jtsb.70006 |
| OpenAlex | W4411105021 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 50 |
Although denaturalisation has been formulated in several different ways, for those working in the liberation psychology paradigm, denaturalisation refers to the practice of resisting mainstream psychology's psychologisation—and thus naturalisation—of systemic oppression. In this article, I work from within the liberation psychology paradigm to consider what denaturalisation means for psychologists working with collectives to consolidate anti‐capitalist struggles through radical political imagination and collective historical memory. Where denaturalising political imagination pushes us to envision a world outside of the naturalised limits imposed by patriarchal and colonial capital, denaturalising memories foregrounds the processes by which structural oppression has become naturalised. In considering memory and imagination in this manner, I attempt to make clear how denaturalised fragments of liberation can be located across historical, contemporary and future‐oriented timescales. Liberation psychology, I argue, draws out how such denaturalisation processes are psycho‐political and can assist activists in taking on the agonistic, psychically demanding and intersubjective processes inherent to denaturalisation. I conclude by reflecting on some of the directions that future liberation psychology work might take in making use of denaturalisation to advance emancipatory grassroots politics
Epistemology · Liberation · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Children's Rights and Participation · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Representations and Identity · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics
Cannibal Capitalism
Keywords (Routledge Revivals)
Denaturalising Society
The Naturalisation of Growth
On Critical Engagement with the Mainstream
The Place of the Psyche in a Constructed World
From Theory Construction to Deconstruction
Psychology and the question of radical democracy
The Past, Present, and Future Entangled
Empire of Normality
Discourse on Colonialism
Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale
What is Wrong with the DSM
After the Archive
Being a Feminist in the Fallist Movement in Contemporary South Africa
Cruzando Fronteras
Each one, teach one
Decolonizing Liberation
Imagination as Crisis
Feminism, Capitalism, and Ecology
Community psychology and its (dis)contents, archival legacies and decolonisation
Notes on decolonizing psychology
History, Critical Legal Studies and the Mysterious Disappearance of Capitalism
De‐ideologization, liberation psychology, and the place of contradiction
Nature and the native
The Political Psychology of Liberation
Decolonizing Psychological Science
Decolonising Climate Change
How the British Working Class Became White
Thinking Capitalism from the Bedroom
Neither Settler nor Native
The Political Unconscious
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |