A critical psychology of the postcolonial

Of the theoretical resources typically taken as the underlying foundations of critical social psychology, elements, typically, each of Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, and Post-Structuralism, one particular mode of critique remains notably absent: postcolonial theory. What might be the most crucial contributions that postcolonial critique can make to the project of critical psychology? One answer is that of a reciprocal forms of critique, the retrieval of a ‘psychopolitics’ in which we not only place the psychological within the register of the political, but - perhaps more challengingly - in which the political is also, strategically, approached through the register of the psychological. What the writings of Fanon and Biko make plain in this connection is the degree to which the narratives and concepts of the social psychological may be reformulated so as to fashion a novel discourse of resistance, one that opens up new avenues for critique for critical psychology, on one hand, and that affords an innovative set of opportunities for the psychological investigation of the vicissitudes of the postcolonial, on the othe

Retrieving Biko: a black consciousness critique of whiteness

There is an important history often neglected by genealogies of ‘critical whiteness studies’: Steve Biko's Black Consciousness critique of white liberalism. What would it mean to retrieve this criticism in the context of white anti-racism in the post-apartheid era? Said's (2003) contrapuntal method proves useful here as a juxtaposing device whereby the writings of a past figure can be critically harnessed, travelling across temporal and ideological boundaries to interrogate the present. Four interlinked modes of disingenuous white anti-racism can thus be identified: (1) a fetishistic preoccupation with disproving one's racism; (2) ostentatious forms of anti-racism that function as means of self-promotion, as paradoxical means of white self-love; (3) the consolidation and extension of agency through redemptive gestures of ‘heroic white anti-racism’; (4) ‘charitable anti-racism’ which fixes tolerance within a model of charity, as an act of generosity and that reiterates the status and role of an anti-racist benefactor

Critical psychology and revolutionary Marxism

This paper addresses the intersection between Marxism and psychology, focusing on `critical' approaches that have emerged in the discipline in the last 15 years. The paper traces the way that elements of Marxism that are diametrically opposed, and in some cases dialectically opposed, to mainstream psychology are evaded, misrepresented or systematically distorted by ostensibly `critical' psychologies in the English-speaking world. Elements of Marxist analysis—the human being as an ensemble of social relations, the materiality of the family, private property and the state, surplus value and cultural capital, alienation and exploitation and ideological mystification—are contrasted with the standard disciplinary notions of the psychological subject, society, utilitarian transparency, unhealthy experience and false beliefs. Specifications of the position of the researcher in Marxism—standpoint, reflexive location, class consciousness, institutional space and social revolution—are set against the dominant notions in mainstream psychology of neutrality, rationalism, individual enlightenment, scientific knowledge and adaptation and amelioration. Change in Marxism—as permanent change, an engagement with relatively enduring structures, theoretical practice, materialist dialectics and prefigurative politics—is pitted against the standard procedures of ratification, pragmatism, empiricism, positivism and the drawing up of blueprints. This analysis of the discipline and its `critical' variants is designed to clear the way for revolutionary Marxist work in and against the domain of psychology