Dalal, F. (2006). Racism: Processes of detachment, dehumanization and hatred. In K. White (Ed.), Unmasking race, culture, and attachment in the psychoanalytic space: Why do we see? What do we think? What do we feel? (pp. 10–35). Karnac Books. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-08262-003
Abstract
This chapter is an in-depth introduction to the complexity of the territory being explored in the monograph. The author challenges readers to reorient their thinking by asking them to consider 4 questions: (1) What is racism? (2) How does psychoanalysis explain the phenomenon of racism? (3) How can attachment theory be used to think about racism? and (4) Why is it that attachment theory is located outside psychoanalysis by psychoanalysts as much as by attachment theorists? The author then describes his own contribution to the field. Having exposed the hollowness of race as a category, he offers his theory of the process of racialization and the accompanying dehumanizing process of “othering” as a much more comprehensive and radical alternative.