What stands out about racism is its ability to withstand efforts to legislate or educate it away. In The Racist Fantasy, Todd McGowan argues that its persistence is due to a massive unconscious investment in a fundamental racist fantasy. As long as this fantasy continues to underlie contemporary society, McGowan claims, racism will remain with us, no matter how strenuously we struggle to eliminate it.
The racist fantasy, a fantasy in which the racial other is a figure who blocks the enjoyment of the racist, is a shared social structure. No one individual invented it, and no one individual is responsible for its perpetuation. While no one is guilty for the emergence of the racist fantasy, people are nonetheless responsible for keeping it alive and thus responsible for fighting against it.
The Racist Fantasy examines how this fantasy provides the psychic basis for the racism that appears so conspicuously throughout modern history. The racist fantasy informs everything from lynching and police shootings to Hollywood blockbusters and musical tastes. This fantasy takes root under capitalism as a way of explaining the failures and disappointments that result from the relationship to the commodity. The struggle against racism involves dislodging the fantasy structure and to change the capitalist relations that require it. This is the project of this book.
- 256 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Halftitle Page
- Title Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Hiding the Unconscious
- 1 The Racist Fantasy
- 2 The Fantasy’s Breadth
- 3 Racism and Modernity
- 4 The Variegations of the Fantasy
- 5 The Violent Issue
- 6 On the Other Side of Fantasy
- Notes
- Index
- Imprint
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Yes, you can access The Racist Fantasy by Todd McGowan in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Literary Criticism for Comparative Literature. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.