“To Materialize Their Every Wish”: Race, Class, and Psychoanalysis in White, Ralph, and Aron

Abstract

Beginning with an anecdote from the author’s own analysis, this paper explores the phantoms (musical, cultural, and historical) that are conjured up by psychoanalysis. In so doing, it extends the author’s reflections, published in the third 2011 issue of this journal, on the relationship between psychoanalysis and historical materialism.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank the other participants in this roundtable for a thoughtful and thought-provoking exchange. And I would most especially like to thank Michael Moskowitz, whose supervision, scholarship, and activism around issues of race, class, and psychoanalysis have been a source of inspiration to me.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ben Kafka

Ben Kafka, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University and an advanced candidate at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR). He is the author of The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork (Zone Books, 2012) as well as numerous articles, essays, and reviews on history, critical theory, and psychoanalysis.