Burying the superego

Bibliographic Data

ID3623834
AuthorsJaco Barnard-Naudé (0000-0002-2670-6672, University of Cape Town, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume49
Issue1
Pages30-48
Publication date2023-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Dynamics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0253-3952 • E-ISSN: 1940-7874
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02533952.2023.2162786
OpenAlexW4313478117
LanguageEN
References cited19

This essay unfolds in four parts. In the first part I argue that the struggle against apartheid must be understood as a war against war, namely a war that is waged with the superego of apartheid as war itself. In the second part, I consider J.M. Coetzee’s essay on The Mind of Apartheid in the context of the hypothesis put forth by Jacques-Alain Miller and others that racism is the theft of enjoyment. I show that the superego of apartheid is both a threatening and a threatened object and that working to produce the impression that the object of enjoyment is under constant threat is an essential component of the superego’s sadism. In part three I stay with Coetzee’s essay to consider the spatialisation of the superego under apartheid. I argue that this spatialisation should be understood in terms of Carl Schmitt’s concept of the nomos. Finally, in part four I reconsider earlier work on apartheid as enforced melancholia to argue for a burial of the apartheid superego that can release the subject of the postapartheid from enforced psychosis

Id, ego and super-ego · Psychoanalysis · Racism · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology · South African History and Culture

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