A Lacanian and post-Althusserian approach to homophobia and its resolution
Master Thesis
1983
Permanent link to this Item
Authors
Supervisors
Journal Title
Link to Journal
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Publisher
University of Cape Town
Department
Faculty
License
Series
Abstract
This thesis is a theoretical analysis. It attempts to address the problem of how to conceive the process by which, in certain cultures, a particular social phenomenon, the stigmatisation of homosexuality, has powerful negative effects at the level of individual emotions. Individuals' abhorrence of their own homosexual desires, as well as individuals' abhorrence of the homosexuality of others, are considered. The answer provided is held to apply to both men and women. The problem is also addressed, within the same parameters, of how change from abhorrence to acceptance of homosexuality is to be conceived with respect to the relation between social and individual phenomena. In order to develop an answer to these questions, relevant aspects of appropriate theoretical frameworks are described and an integration of them developed. These frameworks are: Lacanian psychoanalysis, which provides an account of the individual subject's relation to the social; and a post-structuralist view of ideology, which analyzes the specific contributions made by the social phenomenon of ideology to the way the individual makes sense of the world. A particular aspect of ideology as understood in this view is emphasised and developed. This is the importance ideology is understood to give to the concepts "natural" and "unnatural". The ideological role of these concepts is then argued to provide a link, for the present purposes, between the psychoanalytic theory of the subject and the relevant theory of ideology. In this way a synthesis of the two theoretical areas, suitable for the present aims, is developed. This synthesis is then applied to the problem outlined above of making sense of homophobia (the abhorrence of homosexuality), and to the problem outlined above of making sense of the resolution of homophobia (the change to acceptance of homosexuality). The homophobic individual is argued to be best conceived of as trapped in a complex set of contradictions resulting from the collusion of unconscious strivings with the ideologically emphasised idea of what is natural. The resolution of homophobia is argued to be best conceived of as a resolution of the above-mentioned set of contradictions through modifications of the role given by ideology to the concepts of what is natural and unnatural. This conceptualisation of the synthesis of aspects of Lacanian psychoanalysis and aspects of a theory of ideology is then suggested to have a variety of further applications of the type developed here.
Description
Bibliography: pages 266-280.
Keywords
Reference:
Barris, J. 1983. A Lacanian and post-Althusserian approach to homophobia and its resolution. University of Cape Town.