Unconsciousness-Raising: Considerations for Liberation Psychology, Subjectivity, and Reflexivity Theory

ABSTRACT

Consciousness-raising denotes the process of using people’s experiences of oppression to inform their collective political activity. The role of psychology in the history of consciousness-raising has been double-edged. On the one hand, mainstream psychology has recuperated consciousness-raising, depoliticizing it so that it reflects little more than a therapeutic mode of self-help that adjusts subjects to – rather than challenges – oppressive social systems. On the other hand, those working within the liberation psychology paradigm have sought to harness consciousness-raising for the kinds of politically progressive purposes for which it was initially intended. Through what I call unconsciousness-raising, I consider how those working within the psychoanalytic tradition of liberation psychology can stretch the political capacities of the consciousness-raising process by using this process to recognize how the unconscious structures emancipatory political organizing. Unconsciousness-raising has the potential to shift the activist subject’s relationship to unconscious identifications in accordance with a democratically conceived political agenda, and to harness the emancipatory potential of desire to advance this agenda. I examine what the unconsciousness-raising process can mean for the collective constitution of political subjectivity, and how this process can trouble static conceptions of reflexivity theory. Following this, I offer an example of unconsciousness-raising from the community-engaged work with which I am involved. I conclude by reflecting on some future directions for unconsciousness-raising as a community-engaged and a thoroughly political psychological process.

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Notes

¹ A broad range of left-wing political movements active throughout the Global North during the 1960s and 1970s.

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Notes on contributors

Nick Malherbe

Nick Malherbe is a community psychologist interested in violence, visual methods, and discourse. He works with social movements, cultural workers, and young people. He lives in South Africa.