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The Racist Fantasy: Unconscious Roots of Hatred
What stands out about racism is its ability to withstand efforts to legislate or educate it away. In The Racist Fantasy , Todd McGowan argues that its persistence is due to a massive unconscious investment in a fundamental racist fantasy. As long as this fantasy continues to underlie contemporary society, McGowan claims, racism will remain with us, no matter how strenuously we struggle to eliminate it.
The racist fantasy, a fantasy in which the racial other is a figure who blocks the enjoyment of the racist, is a shared social structure. No one individual invented it, and no one individual is responsible for its perpetuation. While no one is guilty for the emergence of the racist fantasy, people are nonetheless responsible for keeping it alive and thus responsible for fighting against it.
The Racist Fantasy examines how this fantasy provides the psychic basis for the racism that appears so conspicuously throughout modern history. The racist fantasy informs everything from lynching and police shootings to Hollywood blockbusters and musical tastes. This fantasy takes root under capitalism as a way of explaining the failures and disappointments that result from the relationship to the commodity. The struggle against racism involves dislodging the fantasy structure and to change the capitalist relations that require it. This is the project of this book.
The racist fantasy, a fantasy in which the racial other is a figure who blocks the enjoyment of the racist, is a shared social structure. No one individual invented it, and no one individual is responsible for its perpetuation. While no one is guilty for the emergence of the racist fantasy, people are nonetheless responsible for keeping it alive and thus responsible for fighting against it.
The Racist Fantasy examines how this fantasy provides the psychic basis for the racism that appears so conspicuously throughout modern history. The racist fantasy informs everything from lynching and police shootings to Hollywood blockbusters and musical tastes. This fantasy takes root under capitalism as a way of explaining the failures and disappointments that result from the relationship to the commodity. The struggle against racism involves dislodging the fantasy structure and to change the capitalist relations that require it. This is the project of this book.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2022
21 people are currently reading
433 people want to read
About the author
Todd McGowan
47 books207 followersTodd McGowan is Associate Professor of Film at the University of Vermont, US. He is the author of The Fictional Christopher Nolan (2012), Out of Time: Desire in Atemporal Cinema (2011), The Impossible David Lynch (2007), The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan (2007), and other books.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
March 6, 2024
2022 Reading
There is an unmistakable elegance to Todd McGowan's argument in The Racist Fantasy. As McGowan explains in the introduction to The Racist Fantasy: "The book aims to explore the psychic resonance racism has. To do so, it will consider the role that the unconscious plays in racism. What is unconscious about racism is not its destructiveness or its unjustness but the way that it produces enjoyment for the racist" (1). To understand why someone embraces racism, we must reckon with the ways in which racism produces enjoyment for the racist in question. Here McGowan uses terms like enjoyment in distinctly psychoanalytic ways. For psychoanalysis, enjoyment is complex, but it relates to equally important concepts such as deferment, fantasy, the barrier, and lack.
For the racist, the racial other is the site of an excessive pleasure the racist cannot access. This assumption is the racist fantasy incarnate. However, and McGowan is quite clear on this point, the racial other possesses nothing of unique significance. Or, to say this better, the racial other is a confluence of lack and excess, just like the racist. But as McGowan sees it, for racism to persist, the racist must assume the racial other has something the racist does not (i.e., excess without lack). McGowan writes, "While racist ideology can give those invested in it a certain symbolic status and a sense of superiority associated with that, it does not provide enjoyment. Racist ideology gives those invested in it a sense of identity, a sense of belonging that the racial other doesn't have, but identity alone is not enough to ensure capitulation. This is why a racist fantasy is necessary to supplement it. Fantasy supplies the enjoyment that ideology leaves to the side. It explains racism's psychic resonance in a way that racist ideology alone cannot" (4). The fantasy here is the assumption that the racial other pulled a fast one on the racist in question.
For example, consider Donald Trump's assertion that Mexico neglects to "send its best." In total, this is what Trump said, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists." Even though this seems absurd, for psychoanalysis, it makes some sense. For Trump, if you are a hard-working, white American, you suffer (i.e., lack) at the expense of the racial other's excess. But what figures like Trump fail to see are the ways in which the framing of their lack is, itself, excessive. If McGowan has just one point he wants his reader to know, it is this; we are figures of lack and excess, and we experience this lack and excess concurrently. To think otherwise is to chart a path to the racist fantasy, at least from a formal perspective.
This is also why facts fail to dissuade the racist. What McGowan articulates in The Racist Fantasy is the importance of reckoning with the unconscious. As McGowan states, "People enjoy at odds with how they know" (8). The unconscious has no room for facts, and it cares not for facts. To some degree, this is because the unconscious knows before we do, at least in our conscious minds. McGowan writes, "The unconscious acts ahead of our knowledge and becomes visible through its acts...we act out the unconscious that we cannot avow to ourselves" (9).
McGowan's solution is, again, a simple but elegant one: reject inclusion. What McGowan means is incredibly important. He writes, "No amount of inclusion can ever go far enough to erase the distinction between friend and enemy, a distinction that provides the basis for the racist fantasy" (182). For McGowan, a term like "inclusion" is too affirmative yet ironically exclusionary. That is to say, we would do better if we recognized the lack we all share. This is a lack that is both singular and universal, which is to say, it belongs to us as individuals and as a collective. No one ever belongs because true belonging is impossible. Instead, we are all subjects of non-belonging. McGowan writes, "No matter what its content, every fantasy seeks out the structural position of nonbelonging in order to find the enjoyment that it accesses. That is the great formal lesson of fantasy" (183).
As long as we assume someone fails to belong in ways we cannot, racism will persist. For McGowan, subjects (i.e., all of us) must "confront their own nonbelonging and the enjoyment that comes with it" (176). He continues, "Until the association of the racial other with unlimited enjoyment breaks down, racism will continue to have a structuring role in the social order and anyone thrust into the position of the racial other will remain in danger" (176). To end racism, we must end the structure and form particular instances of racism assume. Far too often, we fixate on racism's content (e.g., Trump's Mexican immigrant comment or, frankly, almost anything the man said in the past few years), which is why we stumble. To end racism, we must illuminate the form racism takes, not the content housed within a particular form.
***
2024 Reading (NOTE: For this reading, I only read the introduction and the first and final chapters).
Main Argument
1. Racism is the manifestation of fantasy. That is to say, the racist finds enjoyment (in the psychoanalytic sense) from erecting a barrier to an object of desire, and the racial other functions as that barrier. For McGowan, racism is structural. Therefore, to understand all forms of racism, we must understand the psychic structure of the racist fantasy.
2. We can break from the racist fantasy by understanding the ubiquity of lack. That is to say, “enjoyment derives from lack,” and this is something the racial other has but not exclusively (184). All subjects lack, and we must recognize ourselves as lacking. To disrupt the racist fantasy, we must understand that we already have what we attribute to the racial other exclusively.
Supporting Arguments
Introduction: Hiding the Unconscious
1. Racism is an excess that offers enjoyment to the subject.
2. On the importance of fantasy and enjoyment: “Racism occurs through a fantasy structure that delivers enjoyment to the racist” (3).
3. While racism is also an ideology and mode of production (e.g., capitalism), it cannot provide enjoyment. Fantasy is necessary for enjoyment.
4. The fantasy element of racism remains unconscious. McGowan writes, “The unconscious investment is the central pillar of racism’s intransigence” (5).
5. On the psychic benefits of racism: “If racism didn’t deliver some psychic benefit or satisfaction, no one would be a racist, no matter what their history or material situation” (6).
6. This is an excellent description of the Freudian unconscious: “The unconscious acts ahead of our knowledge and becomes visible through its acts, which is why other people can see our unconscious more clearly than we do” (9).
7. In many ways, this is McGowan’s thesis: “People have a bias in their knowledge because of racism; racism is not a result of a bias in their knowing. To find the root of racism we must look not at mistakes in knowing but at successes in enjoying” (11-12). RACISM —> BIAS not BIAS —> RACISM
8. In summary, “Racism remains intractable as long as it remains enjoyable” (12).
Chapter 1: The Racist Fantasy
1. Fantasy requires the obstacle or barrier for enjoyment to appear: “The fantasy creates desirability through the erection of the obstacle” (14).
2. In McGowan’s “racist fantasy,” the racial other operates as the barrier to the object (perhaps the object of desire?).
3. In the racist fantasy, the racial other creates value for the subject.
4. Regarding enjoyment: “Enjoyment is always tied to an absence, not a presence” (16).
5. Fantasy has the effect of changing any object. For example, “Fantasy renders ordinary objects into objects of desire by making them obtainable. This is its magic act, which it performs through the obstacle” (19). Furthermore, “through fantasy, one can imagine an enjoyment without lack, but this is possible only via the creation of an obstacle that bears responsibility for the failure to attain this enjoyment” (20).
6. Regarding desire: “The failure of desire to find the perfect object is its mode of satisfaction” (20).
7. We must reckon with how the racist sees themselves relative to the racial other: “The subject of the racist fantasy believes itself to be a victim” (22).
8. The racist fantasy offers an explanation or narrative for “the tedium of people’s lives” (23).
9. In simplest terms, the racist fantasy is “parasitic” because he finds enjoyment in the obstacle, not the object.
10. It is important to remember that while these racist fantasies exist within individual psyches, they are best understood as a “collective fantasy” (27).
11. Regarding the marginalization of the Black man in the racist fantasy: “The ostracized position that the Black man occupies enables him to be the site of enjoyment in the fantasy” (29).
12. When considering the racist fantasy, we are considering form over content: “The point for both [the antisemite and the White racist] is to discover an unrestrained enjoyment that they cannot have without the racial other. They look to this other for what they believe they cannot have themselves” (30). Furthermore, “The racist fantasy is a form that can accommodate different contents” (34).
13. But none of this suggests that we should try to free ourselves from fantasy. Instead, we should recognize “that the obstacle is the source of enjoyment rather than a hindrance to it” (36). Furthermore, “When one sees the racist fantasy as a form, one can strip the racism away from it and enjoy without relying on the racial other as an obstacle” (37).
14. We suffer enjoyment.
15. In many ways, the construction of the racial other “lies in attributing one’s enjoyment to the racial other and to excuse the subject from responsibility for its own enjoyment” (39).
16. But the appeal of the racist fantasy is enjoyment without suffering: “The racist fantasy has such a lasting appeal because it promises enjoyment without suffering” (41).
17. Enjoyment always operates as a violation of norms because “even if it violates the norm by adhering to it too enthusiastically. The suffering that it produces stems from going too far” (44). In effect, we must accept the suffering of our enjoyment. That is the ethical choice.
18. It is important to remember that while the racist fantasy operates through individuals, it is a social phenomenon: “The racist fantasy is a shared social structure rather than the product of the derangement of certain individuals” (45).
Chapter 6: On the Other Side of Fantasy
1. So, how do we fix the problem of the racist fantasy? According to McGowan, it “involves taking responsibility for one’s own enjoyment rather than continuing to enjoy through the racial other. This is the fundamental antiracist gesture: enjoying one’s own nonbelonging instead of the nonbelonging of the racial other” (168). McGowan continues, “Whenever one is enjoying, one has responsibility for this enjoyment, no matter where it might seem to emanate from” (173). Furthermore, “Rather than attributing this excessive enjoyment to the racial other, subjects must confront their own nonbelonging and the enjoyment that comes with it” (176).
2. McGowan explores an interesting and important question regarding fantasy: why does a class fantasy not exist? He writes, “We identify with the symbolic position of the wealthy rather than fantasizing about their enjoyment…Identification secures our symbolic identity, enabling us to have a sense of who we are in our society and to convince ourselves that we really have a place within the society through identification with them” (180). In short, “It is the figure of nonbelonging who has access to enjoyment that the billionaire doesn’t” (181).
3. According to McGowan, “Equality can only be equality through the collective failure to belong…We cannot get to universal nonbelonging directly” (183). He continues, “No matter what its content, every fantasy seeks out the structural position of nonbelonging in order to find the enjoyment that it accesses” (183).
4. This quote places a fine point on McGowan’s overarching claim: “Embracing one’s nonbelonging involves seeing the nonbelonging that one attributes to the racial other in oneself” (190).
Sources
Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Frantz Fanon, Achille Mbembe, David Eng, Shinhee Han, Slavoj Zizek, Jennifer Friedlander.
Methods and Influences
Psychoanalysis, Critical Theory.
Questions
None.
Notes and Quotes
Read David Eng and Shinhee Han, Racial Melancholia, Radical Dissociation
Read Sheldon George, Trauma and Race
Quote: “The structure of fantasy necessarily focuses on the obstacle” (15).
There is an unmistakable elegance to Todd McGowan's argument in The Racist Fantasy. As McGowan explains in the introduction to The Racist Fantasy: "The book aims to explore the psychic resonance racism has. To do so, it will consider the role that the unconscious plays in racism. What is unconscious about racism is not its destructiveness or its unjustness but the way that it produces enjoyment for the racist" (1). To understand why someone embraces racism, we must reckon with the ways in which racism produces enjoyment for the racist in question. Here McGowan uses terms like enjoyment in distinctly psychoanalytic ways. For psychoanalysis, enjoyment is complex, but it relates to equally important concepts such as deferment, fantasy, the barrier, and lack.
For the racist, the racial other is the site of an excessive pleasure the racist cannot access. This assumption is the racist fantasy incarnate. However, and McGowan is quite clear on this point, the racial other possesses nothing of unique significance. Or, to say this better, the racial other is a confluence of lack and excess, just like the racist. But as McGowan sees it, for racism to persist, the racist must assume the racial other has something the racist does not (i.e., excess without lack). McGowan writes, "While racist ideology can give those invested in it a certain symbolic status and a sense of superiority associated with that, it does not provide enjoyment. Racist ideology gives those invested in it a sense of identity, a sense of belonging that the racial other doesn't have, but identity alone is not enough to ensure capitulation. This is why a racist fantasy is necessary to supplement it. Fantasy supplies the enjoyment that ideology leaves to the side. It explains racism's psychic resonance in a way that racist ideology alone cannot" (4). The fantasy here is the assumption that the racial other pulled a fast one on the racist in question.
For example, consider Donald Trump's assertion that Mexico neglects to "send its best." In total, this is what Trump said, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists." Even though this seems absurd, for psychoanalysis, it makes some sense. For Trump, if you are a hard-working, white American, you suffer (i.e., lack) at the expense of the racial other's excess. But what figures like Trump fail to see are the ways in which the framing of their lack is, itself, excessive. If McGowan has just one point he wants his reader to know, it is this; we are figures of lack and excess, and we experience this lack and excess concurrently. To think otherwise is to chart a path to the racist fantasy, at least from a formal perspective.
This is also why facts fail to dissuade the racist. What McGowan articulates in The Racist Fantasy is the importance of reckoning with the unconscious. As McGowan states, "People enjoy at odds with how they know" (8). The unconscious has no room for facts, and it cares not for facts. To some degree, this is because the unconscious knows before we do, at least in our conscious minds. McGowan writes, "The unconscious acts ahead of our knowledge and becomes visible through its acts...we act out the unconscious that we cannot avow to ourselves" (9).
McGowan's solution is, again, a simple but elegant one: reject inclusion. What McGowan means is incredibly important. He writes, "No amount of inclusion can ever go far enough to erase the distinction between friend and enemy, a distinction that provides the basis for the racist fantasy" (182). For McGowan, a term like "inclusion" is too affirmative yet ironically exclusionary. That is to say, we would do better if we recognized the lack we all share. This is a lack that is both singular and universal, which is to say, it belongs to us as individuals and as a collective. No one ever belongs because true belonging is impossible. Instead, we are all subjects of non-belonging. McGowan writes, "No matter what its content, every fantasy seeks out the structural position of nonbelonging in order to find the enjoyment that it accesses. That is the great formal lesson of fantasy" (183).
As long as we assume someone fails to belong in ways we cannot, racism will persist. For McGowan, subjects (i.e., all of us) must "confront their own nonbelonging and the enjoyment that comes with it" (176). He continues, "Until the association of the racial other with unlimited enjoyment breaks down, racism will continue to have a structuring role in the social order and anyone thrust into the position of the racial other will remain in danger" (176). To end racism, we must end the structure and form particular instances of racism assume. Far too often, we fixate on racism's content (e.g., Trump's Mexican immigrant comment or, frankly, almost anything the man said in the past few years), which is why we stumble. To end racism, we must illuminate the form racism takes, not the content housed within a particular form.
***
2024 Reading (NOTE: For this reading, I only read the introduction and the first and final chapters).
Main Argument
1. Racism is the manifestation of fantasy. That is to say, the racist finds enjoyment (in the psychoanalytic sense) from erecting a barrier to an object of desire, and the racial other functions as that barrier. For McGowan, racism is structural. Therefore, to understand all forms of racism, we must understand the psychic structure of the racist fantasy.
2. We can break from the racist fantasy by understanding the ubiquity of lack. That is to say, “enjoyment derives from lack,” and this is something the racial other has but not exclusively (184). All subjects lack, and we must recognize ourselves as lacking. To disrupt the racist fantasy, we must understand that we already have what we attribute to the racial other exclusively.
Supporting Arguments
Introduction: Hiding the Unconscious
1. Racism is an excess that offers enjoyment to the subject.
2. On the importance of fantasy and enjoyment: “Racism occurs through a fantasy structure that delivers enjoyment to the racist” (3).
3. While racism is also an ideology and mode of production (e.g., capitalism), it cannot provide enjoyment. Fantasy is necessary for enjoyment.
4. The fantasy element of racism remains unconscious. McGowan writes, “The unconscious investment is the central pillar of racism’s intransigence” (5).
5. On the psychic benefits of racism: “If racism didn’t deliver some psychic benefit or satisfaction, no one would be a racist, no matter what their history or material situation” (6).
6. This is an excellent description of the Freudian unconscious: “The unconscious acts ahead of our knowledge and becomes visible through its acts, which is why other people can see our unconscious more clearly than we do” (9).
7. In many ways, this is McGowan’s thesis: “People have a bias in their knowledge because of racism; racism is not a result of a bias in their knowing. To find the root of racism we must look not at mistakes in knowing but at successes in enjoying” (11-12). RACISM —> BIAS not BIAS —> RACISM
8. In summary, “Racism remains intractable as long as it remains enjoyable” (12).
Chapter 1: The Racist Fantasy
1. Fantasy requires the obstacle or barrier for enjoyment to appear: “The fantasy creates desirability through the erection of the obstacle” (14).
2. In McGowan’s “racist fantasy,” the racial other operates as the barrier to the object (perhaps the object of desire?).
3. In the racist fantasy, the racial other creates value for the subject.
4. Regarding enjoyment: “Enjoyment is always tied to an absence, not a presence” (16).
5. Fantasy has the effect of changing any object. For example, “Fantasy renders ordinary objects into objects of desire by making them obtainable. This is its magic act, which it performs through the obstacle” (19). Furthermore, “through fantasy, one can imagine an enjoyment without lack, but this is possible only via the creation of an obstacle that bears responsibility for the failure to attain this enjoyment” (20).
6. Regarding desire: “The failure of desire to find the perfect object is its mode of satisfaction” (20).
7. We must reckon with how the racist sees themselves relative to the racial other: “The subject of the racist fantasy believes itself to be a victim” (22).
8. The racist fantasy offers an explanation or narrative for “the tedium of people’s lives” (23).
9. In simplest terms, the racist fantasy is “parasitic” because he finds enjoyment in the obstacle, not the object.
10. It is important to remember that while these racist fantasies exist within individual psyches, they are best understood as a “collective fantasy” (27).
11. Regarding the marginalization of the Black man in the racist fantasy: “The ostracized position that the Black man occupies enables him to be the site of enjoyment in the fantasy” (29).
12. When considering the racist fantasy, we are considering form over content: “The point for both [the antisemite and the White racist] is to discover an unrestrained enjoyment that they cannot have without the racial other. They look to this other for what they believe they cannot have themselves” (30). Furthermore, “The racist fantasy is a form that can accommodate different contents” (34).
13. But none of this suggests that we should try to free ourselves from fantasy. Instead, we should recognize “that the obstacle is the source of enjoyment rather than a hindrance to it” (36). Furthermore, “When one sees the racist fantasy as a form, one can strip the racism away from it and enjoy without relying on the racial other as an obstacle” (37).
14. We suffer enjoyment.
15. In many ways, the construction of the racial other “lies in attributing one’s enjoyment to the racial other and to excuse the subject from responsibility for its own enjoyment” (39).
16. But the appeal of the racist fantasy is enjoyment without suffering: “The racist fantasy has such a lasting appeal because it promises enjoyment without suffering” (41).
17. Enjoyment always operates as a violation of norms because “even if it violates the norm by adhering to it too enthusiastically. The suffering that it produces stems from going too far” (44). In effect, we must accept the suffering of our enjoyment. That is the ethical choice.
18. It is important to remember that while the racist fantasy operates through individuals, it is a social phenomenon: “The racist fantasy is a shared social structure rather than the product of the derangement of certain individuals” (45).
Chapter 6: On the Other Side of Fantasy
1. So, how do we fix the problem of the racist fantasy? According to McGowan, it “involves taking responsibility for one’s own enjoyment rather than continuing to enjoy through the racial other. This is the fundamental antiracist gesture: enjoying one’s own nonbelonging instead of the nonbelonging of the racial other” (168). McGowan continues, “Whenever one is enjoying, one has responsibility for this enjoyment, no matter where it might seem to emanate from” (173). Furthermore, “Rather than attributing this excessive enjoyment to the racial other, subjects must confront their own nonbelonging and the enjoyment that comes with it” (176).
2. McGowan explores an interesting and important question regarding fantasy: why does a class fantasy not exist? He writes, “We identify with the symbolic position of the wealthy rather than fantasizing about their enjoyment…Identification secures our symbolic identity, enabling us to have a sense of who we are in our society and to convince ourselves that we really have a place within the society through identification with them” (180). In short, “It is the figure of nonbelonging who has access to enjoyment that the billionaire doesn’t” (181).
3. According to McGowan, “Equality can only be equality through the collective failure to belong…We cannot get to universal nonbelonging directly” (183). He continues, “No matter what its content, every fantasy seeks out the structural position of nonbelonging in order to find the enjoyment that it accesses” (183).
4. This quote places a fine point on McGowan’s overarching claim: “Embracing one’s nonbelonging involves seeing the nonbelonging that one attributes to the racial other in oneself” (190).
Sources
Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Frantz Fanon, Achille Mbembe, David Eng, Shinhee Han, Slavoj Zizek, Jennifer Friedlander.
Methods and Influences
Psychoanalysis, Critical Theory.
Questions
None.
Notes and Quotes
Read David Eng and Shinhee Han, Racial Melancholia, Radical Dissociation
Read Sheldon George, Trauma and Race
Quote: “The structure of fantasy necessarily focuses on the obstacle” (15).
May 11, 2023
mcgowan is great at writing on difficult / counter-intuitive ideas so clearly that they almost feel like 'common-sense'. detailed but always with the big picture in mind. he seems sensitive in his pacing and structure to not bog down the reader plus be really knows how to sprinkle in examples at the right time. he's like if zizek took stimulants and had better politics. the object of any given chunk of mcgowan's prose is usually so obvious that he can get away with covering a lot in a short period without sacrificing how clear he is. this makes you want to highlight every word bc it all feels so succinct / crucial.
it's not like he developed tunnel vision for this one, but here he seems to eplain himself too well. he really doesn't need to spend the time that he does on these concepts so some sections feel so exhaustive that they at times threaten to be tedious. maybe i can only say this retroactively but i feel even beginners might swe this text as moving too slowly at times. anyway it feels weird to bitch about too much clarity (especially when it comes to theory lol) and i thought this was another good mcgowan book
it's not like he developed tunnel vision for this one, but here he seems to eplain himself too well. he really doesn't need to spend the time that he does on these concepts so some sections feel so exhaustive that they at times threaten to be tedious. maybe i can only say this retroactively but i feel even beginners might swe this text as moving too slowly at times. anyway it feels weird to bitch about too much clarity (especially when it comes to theory lol) and i thought this was another good mcgowan book
August 16, 2023
What is the pleasure that racists gain from being racist? The obvious answer, I guess, is some odd feeling of superiority. That isn’t the answer that is given here. Rather, the author believes that what racists gain most from their racism is a kind of transference of their hidden desires onto the racial other. Often, although not always, these desires are sexual, the racial other is imagined to possess sexual potency far in excess of the racist and this potency highlights a lack in the racist that must be tamed or eliminated in the racial other.
This is the third book by this author I’ve reviewed. They generally are based on a psychological discussion of an aspect of human nature that relies heavily on Hegelian ideas, particularly of the dialectic of the universal and particular. This book is not much different.
At one point he discusses the sexual fantasies that white supremacist culture holds for black men. He discusses how Malcolm X refers to this in his autobiography, how white men would pay to watch a black man having sex with a white woman, or how white women would ask for a black escort, but one who was ‘really black’, a dark-skinned black man, not merely brown. It’s that old cliché, once you’ve gone black you can’t go back. Which is actually the author’s point here – the imagined sexual prowess of the black lover is the site of the threat to white men, just as their imagined sexual potency multiplies this threat since it is the none-too-hidden desire that is being transferred to the racial other.
The need to be ‘civilised’ means we transfer our sexual fantasies onto the racial other who is thus understood to be uncivilised. We imagine they get to enact the excesses of our desires, while we must remain within the bounds of decency. That is, until we believe the racial other has transgressed those bounds – bounds decided by ourselves – then we are excessive in our revenge. As the author notes, black men, when lynched, were often castrated as well. Black men were therefore the victims of white sexual fantasies. The author mentions police murders of Black men in the US and how these murders often involves multiple gunshots. Far in excess of what would otherwise be understood to be reasonable - since, nothing about these situations is reasonable in the least. White fantasies leading to white excess.
A fascinating inversion occurs with Arab men. In the early years of western cinema, Arabs were seducers. Think Rudolph Valentino with some white woman swooning in his arms. The author says there was an interesting shift that came about with the remarkably easy access to pornography that the internet provided. In the west, nudity became so commonplace that it hardly retained its ability to titillate. However, in the Arab world, the stereotype was for women to be increasingly covered. Rather than the Arab male being understood as a seducing sheik, he became a kind of sexual novice. But this appealed to a western fantasy of rediscovering the pleasure of hidden sexual attraction, even if at the expense of the guileless Arab male. The women become nun like and ready to be corrupted, the men too sexually immature to be of any threat.
This extends to the fantasies the Arab men are meant to hold that drives them to become suicide bombers – their reward is 72 virgins in heaven. But, as comedians such as Billy Connolly have said, give me one old whore over 72 virgins any day. All of which speaks yet again to the sexual immaturity of the Arab male.
Which is where the story gets interesting. Everyone in the west knows that this is the major reward and motivating force behind suicide bombers, this promise in the Qur’an of 72 virgins for martyrs. Except the author says that, of course, there is no such promise. And even if you can find a Muslim text that promises such a thing, it is highly unlikely this is the motivation for suicide bombing. Rather, it is again an extension of a western fantasy and therefore used as an excuse for the barbaric excesses we have enacted on the Middle East since 911 – that is, according to a recent report by Brown University, perhaps 4.5 million deaths.
Racism is excessive by its very nature. And it is this excess that supplies the hidden pleasures that perpetuate racism.
Having recently finished his book on humour, I wondered what the racist mixing of excess and lack has to say in relation to his thesis in that book. I never quite come away from a book on psychology feeling wholly satisfied with the arguments, but I can’t help feeling that this idea of transference of desire leading to the joy of racism is a very interesting thesis.
This is the third book by this author I’ve reviewed. They generally are based on a psychological discussion of an aspect of human nature that relies heavily on Hegelian ideas, particularly of the dialectic of the universal and particular. This book is not much different.
At one point he discusses the sexual fantasies that white supremacist culture holds for black men. He discusses how Malcolm X refers to this in his autobiography, how white men would pay to watch a black man having sex with a white woman, or how white women would ask for a black escort, but one who was ‘really black’, a dark-skinned black man, not merely brown. It’s that old cliché, once you’ve gone black you can’t go back. Which is actually the author’s point here – the imagined sexual prowess of the black lover is the site of the threat to white men, just as their imagined sexual potency multiplies this threat since it is the none-too-hidden desire that is being transferred to the racial other.
The need to be ‘civilised’ means we transfer our sexual fantasies onto the racial other who is thus understood to be uncivilised. We imagine they get to enact the excesses of our desires, while we must remain within the bounds of decency. That is, until we believe the racial other has transgressed those bounds – bounds decided by ourselves – then we are excessive in our revenge. As the author notes, black men, when lynched, were often castrated as well. Black men were therefore the victims of white sexual fantasies. The author mentions police murders of Black men in the US and how these murders often involves multiple gunshots. Far in excess of what would otherwise be understood to be reasonable - since, nothing about these situations is reasonable in the least. White fantasies leading to white excess.
A fascinating inversion occurs with Arab men. In the early years of western cinema, Arabs were seducers. Think Rudolph Valentino with some white woman swooning in his arms. The author says there was an interesting shift that came about with the remarkably easy access to pornography that the internet provided. In the west, nudity became so commonplace that it hardly retained its ability to titillate. However, in the Arab world, the stereotype was for women to be increasingly covered. Rather than the Arab male being understood as a seducing sheik, he became a kind of sexual novice. But this appealed to a western fantasy of rediscovering the pleasure of hidden sexual attraction, even if at the expense of the guileless Arab male. The women become nun like and ready to be corrupted, the men too sexually immature to be of any threat.
This extends to the fantasies the Arab men are meant to hold that drives them to become suicide bombers – their reward is 72 virgins in heaven. But, as comedians such as Billy Connolly have said, give me one old whore over 72 virgins any day. All of which speaks yet again to the sexual immaturity of the Arab male.
Which is where the story gets interesting. Everyone in the west knows that this is the major reward and motivating force behind suicide bombers, this promise in the Qur’an of 72 virgins for martyrs. Except the author says that, of course, there is no such promise. And even if you can find a Muslim text that promises such a thing, it is highly unlikely this is the motivation for suicide bombing. Rather, it is again an extension of a western fantasy and therefore used as an excuse for the barbaric excesses we have enacted on the Middle East since 911 – that is, according to a recent report by Brown University, perhaps 4.5 million deaths.
Racism is excessive by its very nature. And it is this excess that supplies the hidden pleasures that perpetuate racism.
Having recently finished his book on humour, I wondered what the racist mixing of excess and lack has to say in relation to his thesis in that book. I never quite come away from a book on psychology feeling wholly satisfied with the arguments, but I can’t help feeling that this idea of transference of desire leading to the joy of racism is a very interesting thesis.
August 15, 2025
Another fantastic book by Todd McGowan, that author halfway between sociology, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, a disciple of Boothby and Žižek (to name just a couple), capable in all his essays of showing us why human subjectivity, language and mind are not reducible to biology, neurons, or predictable/simplistic "mathematical" laws. If McGowan is so essential today, it is precisely because he is one of the few authors capable of pointing out why a humanistic form of knowledge must focus on what is non-humanistic—namely, alienation, non-belonging, the non-identitarian, and the non-conscious.
Without a doubt, this book (like most of those he has written) offers, grounded in a very fertile tradition, much to think about. In this case, it focuses on racism, although, as readers will be able to infer, his thesis can be applied to many other phenomena.
It is a shame that authors capable of expressing such subtle, complex, and lucid theories about the human condition are so little acclaimed and valued. In fact, McGowan has not yet been translated into Spanish.
Without a doubt, this book (like most of those he has written) offers, grounded in a very fertile tradition, much to think about. In this case, it focuses on racism, although, as readers will be able to infer, his thesis can be applied to many other phenomena.
It is a shame that authors capable of expressing such subtle, complex, and lucid theories about the human condition are so little acclaimed and valued. In fact, McGowan has not yet been translated into Spanish.
June 30, 2024
So happy I stumbled upon this book in the library. The argument here at times felt a bit counterintuitive to me (as someone not so familiar with the theory of psychoanalysis) but I have come to understand its profoundness: to combat racism, one has to take ownership of one's enjoyment (instead of taking it out on the other, the racial fantasy object, which gets perceived as an obstacle to our enjoyment).
December 10, 2022
In spite of repetitions of the main argument, 5 stars, because when it is good, Todd McGowan's writing is crystal clear like no other who writes on this stuff (i.e. psychoanalytically-inspired social and political thought). Strongly recommended.
July 2, 2023
The definitive rejoinder to the recent outburst of liberal inclusivity and "white privilege" projects. Utterly innovative, clear and revelatory.
August 7, 2023
mcgowan doesn't miss
August 14, 2024
It made me think about things I hadn't thought about before. It's an eye-opening book about the unconscious dimension of racism.
December 7, 2024
Stop blaming yourself or capitalism for your failure, be a racist and blame other race.
December 5, 2025
Reading Todd McGowan’s The Racist Fantasy is a profoundly cathartic, insightful and liberating experience. McGowan guides one through a Lacanian analysis of how racial prejudice is sustained by an underlying sense of enjoyment (jouissance) conceived from collective fantasies, those hidden narratives that shape one’s unconscious attitudes towards “the other.” His expert blend of lucid theory and concrete examples offers practical tools for recognising and dismantling these fantasies in one’s own perception.
The book moves deftly from psychoanalytic concepts to real-world implications, exploring how institutions, media and everyday conversations perpetuate unconscious racial biases. Each chapter concludes with reflective summaries, inviting one to examine one’s own complicity and appreciate being content with nonbelonging. By the end, one is not only armed with a better understanding of racism’s psychic underpinnings but also equipped with strategies for personal and social improvement.
For anyone who has ever felt the devouring defeatism of witnessing or experiencing politically coded hostility (whether in academic settings or casual encounters) The Racist Fantasy provides both illumination and salvation. McGowan’s research (as a supplement to the progress I'm doing in therapy) is instrumental in encouraging a silenced part of me find expression by deepening my understanding of heart-rending, split personality behaviours I encountered while surviving primary, secondary, and tertiary education. I sometimes found myself contending with individuals who, on the surface, appeared genuinely committed to progressive and egalitarian values, yet whose actions - and occasional slips of the tongue - betrayed a subconscious partially shackled by the dehumanising ideals of past regimes.
The book moves deftly from psychoanalytic concepts to real-world implications, exploring how institutions, media and everyday conversations perpetuate unconscious racial biases. Each chapter concludes with reflective summaries, inviting one to examine one’s own complicity and appreciate being content with nonbelonging. By the end, one is not only armed with a better understanding of racism’s psychic underpinnings but also equipped with strategies for personal and social improvement.
For anyone who has ever felt the devouring defeatism of witnessing or experiencing politically coded hostility (whether in academic settings or casual encounters) The Racist Fantasy provides both illumination and salvation. McGowan’s research (as a supplement to the progress I'm doing in therapy) is instrumental in encouraging a silenced part of me find expression by deepening my understanding of heart-rending, split personality behaviours I encountered while surviving primary, secondary, and tertiary education. I sometimes found myself contending with individuals who, on the surface, appeared genuinely committed to progressive and egalitarian values, yet whose actions - and occasional slips of the tongue - betrayed a subconscious partially shackled by the dehumanising ideals of past regimes.
April 8, 2023
Este libro es una explicación desde el psicoanálisis (y filosofía) sobre las causas del racismo. Todd McGowan señala que el racismo se basa en la fantasía de un otro no castrado (y racializado) que puede acceder y gozar de los objetos deseados - un otro racializado que sería un obstáculo alcanzar el goce, por lo que deben de ser marginalizados o dominados. En otras palabras, esta fantasía moviliza el goce psíquico inconsciente de una manera colectiva generando el racismo. Este tipo de estructura psíquica se puede aplicar por igual al antisemitismo, el racismo o el antieslamismo. Así como a las consecuencias de violencia directa del racismo o a su conexión con el capitalismo.
la obra consta de seis seccione más una introducción, si bien esta escrito con lenguaje "técnico" es bastante accesible por la estructura y la forma en que esta escrito. Los capítulos contienen secciones cortas, contiene muchas explicaciones y además ejemplos que permiten clarificar la teoría. Si bien la mayor parte de los ejemplos se refieren a casos de EUA o Europa, estos se puedne aplicar a otros contextos. Un libro altamente recomendado para combatir al racismo.
la obra consta de seis seccione más una introducción, si bien esta escrito con lenguaje "técnico" es bastante accesible por la estructura y la forma en que esta escrito. Los capítulos contienen secciones cortas, contiene muchas explicaciones y además ejemplos que permiten clarificar la teoría. Si bien la mayor parte de los ejemplos se refieren a casos de EUA o Europa, estos se puedne aplicar a otros contextos. Un libro altamente recomendado para combatir al racismo.
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