The state and the colonial unconscious

Abstract

In this article, Fanon’s concept of the colonial unconscious – introduced in Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon 1968) – is used to clarify the post-1994 political conjuncture in South Africa; in particular, unconscious forms of resistance against the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). Fanon’s concept of colonialism is first outlined and developed before his concept of the colonial unconscious is itself refined and put to work in the analysis of Brett Murray’s The Spear in terms of the return of the colonial repressed. It is argued, in conclusion, that the NDR needs to include within its ambit this unconscious dimension of South African politics without, however, giving in to the temptation of attempting to totalise and saturate all processes of subject formation.

Keywords:

• National Democratic Revolution
• post-apartheid South Africa
• Fanon
• Brett Murray

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Raymond Suttner, Ivor Chipkin, Ahmed Veriava, Komnas Poriazis, Lwazi Lushaba, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, the participants at the PARI seminar, the Horizontal Group, and The Tribe of Moles Collective.

Notes

1. On the unconscious and the always-present prejudice against its very possibility, see Lacan 2008, chapter 1. It is very often (still) assumed that such a concept is a sheer contradiction in terms – how can one possibly hold beliefs without being conscious of doing so? – “a belief just is something I know I have.” However, just because a belief is counterintuitive doesn’t (we should know by now) rule it out – the belief in question here being “that it is possible to hold a belief without being conscious of doing so” – or, perhaps even more difficult to swallow, the belief that one can have an experience that affects one without being conscious of this happening. Instead, we should rather see where the argument takes us.

2. My foil here is the ontological fatalism of Frank Wilderson’s argument. See Wilderson (2008), according to which “the only way Humanity can maintain both its corporeal and libidinal integrity is through the various strategies through which Blackness is the abyss into which humanness can never fall” (105). And “were there to be a place and time for blacks cartography and temporality would be impossible” (111). Here then, the closure of colonialism is absolute.

3. This section was presented at the Tribe of Moles Colloquium – Race, Representation and the Commons, September 2012.

4. On the subject of anxiety and the “lack of the lack” to which it is exposed, see Badiou 2009, part 3.

5. On “element” and “moment” and “the no-man’s land” of unfixity, see Laclau and Mouffe (1985, chapter 3).

6. See Wilderson (2008).

7. See Laclau (1990, part 1) on the reactivation of sedimented objectivity.

8. On the master signifier see Zizek (1989).

9. On the symbolic imaginary and real, see Zizek (2006b, chapters 3 and 12), and Badiou (2009, part 3).

10. On the “part of no part” and “object a” see Zizek (2012, chapter 10).

11. This is the concept of the subject that Zizek argues (Laclau and Mouffe 1985) requires but does not produce. See Zizek (2005, chapter 3).

12. On the “out place” of the proletariat see Badiou (2009, part 3).

13. On the separation of the subject from the signifier, see Lacan (1981, chapter 16).

14. On this Act in which the subject sustains itself, see Zizek (2008, chapter 6).

15. On “inverse interpolation” see Johnston (2006, 49).

16. On the relations between anxiety, courage and emancipation, see Badiou (2009, part 3).