Lacan is pretty hard to resist (in fact, according to him, impossible to resist)

After reading the chapter on Lacan (and consequently on Freud), I have mixed feelings because I saw the immediate relevance of certain ideas that would fit very well into my discipline, postcolonial francophone literature from the Caribbean and West Africa (mostly female authors), yet I believe that some of his arguments undermined some of the key issues in the literature.

 One thing I really liked was Lacan's explanation of the effects of trauma on the subject, as well as the representation in the unconscious and the coinciding appearance of symptom and resolution. This is very pertinent to the discussion of "la folie antillaise" and the general neurosis often experienced by a colonized population. These concepts would be very pertinent to the study of the postcolonial (and post-slavery) condition.

However, I find his description of resistance oversimplified and problematic as he relates acts of resistance to the ego, which he claims "operates solely with a view to covering the displacement constituted by the subject." This logic would leave the marginalized without defense to abuse and degradation - without any agency in the actual conflict, as if there is no way of preventing further psychological harm, just a way of curing it later (sounds like a lucrative situation for a psychoanalyst, just saying). And understanding the fragility of the human psyche, I find it extremely hard to believe that deeper mechanisms of defense are not present. I also find the relation to animal instinct problematic in the sense that, at least how it seems to me, he believes humans are above animal behavior, but I digress...

Much of the literature from this region deals with the trauma of slavery and colonialism and very often "the escape" from this imposed society of denigration towards lesser races appears to take place in the imagination of a number of the female characters. The other states of consciousness in which these women would seek refuge from time to time served as a temporary reprieve and nourished the hope for the eventuality of a different world. Lacan's discourse about the imaginary nature of resistance as a sign of futility just isn't evidenced in the actual experiences of these women.

Anyway, that's a good bit for now. Excited to discuss in class :)