| Summary: | This work examines the use of psychoanalytic terms and concepts in postcolonial
theory, with attention to the social and historical contexts in which those terms and models
originated. The thesis provides an overview of the different academic and political contexts
out of which postcolonial theory evolved, focusing on how identity came to be a central term
within postcolonial debates. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Anne McClintock, it
critiques the current use of psychoanalytic models by postcolonial theorists, arguing that
psychoanalysis is itself implicated in the history of European imperialism and brings with it
concomitant assumptions about the nature of race, class, gender, and sexuality. The thesis
provides an overview of the work of Charcot, Freud and Lacan. It takes up some of their
major contributions to psychoanalysis, and discusses the social and political contexts in
which those works were developed. The thesis goes on to provide a detailed analysis of the
intersection of postcolonial theory and psychoanalysis in the work of Frantz Fanon, Edward
Said, Homi Bhabha and Helene Cixous. The thesis concludes by discussing what I view as
the two major ethical and intellectual problems that arise from the use of psychoanalysis in
postcolonial theory. I argue, first, that psychoanalysis developed within the same cultural
and political context as European colonialism. In spite of its moments of self-consciousness,
psychoanalysis, nonetheless, reproduces some of the models of identity that supported
European imperialism, both in Europe and abroad. Secondly, I argue that psychoanalysis
takes, at root, a pessimistic view of human nature and this pessimism is fundamentally at
odds with the emancipatory motives of postcolonial theory. === Arts, Faculty of === English, Department of === Graduate
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