Critical Reflection On Psychoanalysis And Feminism

Critical Reflection #3: Jane Flax (2004) In Flax’s What Is the Subject? Review Essay on Psychoanalysis and Feminism in a Postcolonial Time (2004), she questions whether or not psychoanalytic theory, which is heavily centred on sex and gender identity, would be able to withstand the inclusion of other factors like race. She argues that both feminism and psychoanalysis has been treated expressed through a white, Western, middle class view and has done little to include issues around race and sexuality (Flax 906). Ultimately, she argues that gender identity is assigned according to culture, which is defined by racial histories and geographical locations and influences how the privileged and the marginalized come to view gender roles (Flax 919). Flax begins her argument by discussing the idea of transitional space: the space between the external (social) world and the internal (personal) world that allows us to take in social facts from reality and understand it within our subjective field/fantasy (Flax 908). This space gives us the ability to have exploration, meaning making, understanding and identity (Flax 908). In other words, we are able to interpret what we see in the external world based on our …show more content…
She introduces the term ‘internalization’ (Flax 916) and defines it as the taking in of relations with other objects, people or even groups of people (Flax 916). This ‘taking in’ is affected by our own feelings and fantasy, which provides a subjective view of that relation (Flax 916). Flax argues that those who are privileged, for example white, can degrade a racialized other as a whole, leading to an idealized image of the self. She reasons that this is a way to defend against guilt and maintain psychic stability (Flax 916-917). For the denigrated racial group, they take in this denigration while trying to achieve the idealized image of the privilege (Flax