In this provocative and necessary book, Robert K. Beshara uses psychoanalytic discursive analysis to explore the possibility of a genuinely anti-colonial critical psychology. Drawing on postcolonial and decolonial approaches to Islamophobia, this book enhances understandings of Critical Border Thinking and Lacanian Discourse Analysis alongside other theoretico-methodological approaches. Using a critical decolonial psychology approach to conceptualize everyday Islamophobia, the author examines theoretical resources situated within the discursive turn, such as decoloniality/transmodernity, and carries out an archaeology of (counter)terrorism, a genealogy of the conceptual Muslim, and a Žižekian ideology critique. Conceiving of Decolonial Psychoanalysis as one theoretical resource for Critical Islamophobia Studies (CIS), the author also applies Lacanian Discourse Analysis to extracts from interviews conducted with US Muslims to theorize their ethico-political subjectivity and considers a politics of resistance, adversarial aesthetics, and ethics of liberation. Essential to any attempt to come to terms with the legacy of racism in psychology, and the only critical psychological study on Islamophobia in the US, this is fascinating reading for anyone interested in a critical approach to Islamophobia. Table of Contents DEDICATION ACKOWLEDGMENTS LIST OF FIGURES FOREWORD I. THEORIZING AND RESEARCHING ISLAMOPHOBIA/ISLAMOPHILIA IN THE AGE OF TRUMP II. THE MASTER’S DISCOURSE: AN ARCHEOLOGY OF (COUNTER)TERRORISM AND A GENEALOGY OF THE CONCEPTUAL MUSLIM III. THE UNIVERSITY DISCOURSE: THE PSYCHOLOGIZATION OF ISLAMOPHOBIA IV. THE HYSTERIC’S DISCOURSE: EPISTEMIC RESISTANCE, OR US MUSLIMS AS ETHICAL SUBJECTS V. THE ANALYST’S DISCOURSE: ONTIC RESISTANCE, OR US MUSLIMS AS POLITICAL SUBJECTS VI. TOWARDS A RADICAL MASTER: FROM DECOLONIAL PSYCHOANALYSIS TO LIBERATION PRAXIS REFERENCES About the Author Robert K. Beshara is a critical psychologist, interested in theorizing subjectivity vis-à-vis ideology through radical qualitative research (e.g., discourse analysis). In addition to being a scholar-activist, he is a fine artist with a background in film, theater, and music. He holds two terminal degrees: a Ph.D. in Psychology: Consciousness and Society from the University of West Georgia and an M.F.A. in Independent Film and Digital Imaging from Governors State University. He currently works as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Northern New Mexico College. For more information visit: www.robertbeshara.com
|