Racial Relations, Psychoanalysis, Discourse and the Legacy of Four Black Brazilian Authors

Abstract

The article aims to discuss aspects of works by four black Brazilian women authors. thors to psychoanalysis and psychology. Lélia Gonzales, Neuza Santos Souza, Isildinha Baptista Nogueira, and Maria Aparecida Silva Bento, in dialogue with psychoanalytic theory, produced analyses of Black and White subjectivities, considering the structurally racist context of the Brazilian society. Their work calls on Brazilian psychoanalysis to wake up from the myth of racial democracy and listen to testimonies of racial violence in Brazil. Their work also shows the importance of discursive productions in the constitution of the Brazilian culture, relations of racial domination and exploitation, and ways of living, feeling, and acting. As a method, the notions of ideology, resistance, and conditions of discourse production were utilized to address the theoretical constructions of the authors and analyze their effects in the field of psychoanalysis, as well as their fundamental role in confronting racism and epistemicide within the scope of Brazilian psychology. The results show that the work of these authors highlights, among other things, the importance of their implications based on the place they occupy/occupied, producing resistance to the (non)place reserved for black people in psychoanalytic theory, and placing their life experiences as the driving force behind an academic production that constructs other meanings where there was, the myth of racial democracy, or silencing. The conclusions point to the role of the discourse of neutrality and subject-object separation in maintaining the status quo of racial inequality in psychoanalytic theory, clinical practice, and the Psychology field.