I was asked by John Solomos to write a chapter for his ‘Blackwell Companion on Race and Ethnic Studies’ giving a critical survey of psychoanalytic theories of race and racism. These theories were viewed with great suspicion, some of it justified, by the Anti Racist Left, although much of their dismissive attitude was based on ignorance or misunderstanding. I wrote an essay which introduced the main theories of Freud and the post Freudians, as well as Kleinian and Lacanian concepts. The work of Fanon and the Frankfurt school is discussed at length, as well as more recent work by Daniel Sibony and Julia Kristeva. The focus of the argument is on rethinking the notion of
Unconscious racism, and understanding the role of phantasy and desire in the working of the racist imagination.
