The paper is an historical and geographical account of the imaginary body-space that psychologists call "the psyche." I treat the psyche as a space like any other space—one whose appearance as an object of study and analysis has a history and place. At the same time, the paper shows how the psyche's appearance as an object of analysis coincided with the many human violences associated with colonialism and its cousin, racism. In a nutshell, the psyche operated as a place of secrets where violence was forgotten, stored, and made 'unconscious.' Perhaps the paper is highly cited because the study lies at the intersection of many disciplinary interests, including racism, colonialism, history, geography, and psychoanalysis. That is, its disciplinary reach is broad.

I sure hope so! The study shows that by mapping out the spaces of racism (e.g., the many segregated spaces of most large northern U.S. cities) and the stories of racial fear that are called upon to explain and justify this segregation (e.g., fears of black men as rapists of white women), the original violences involved in segregation will be uncovered. Uncovering racist violence is crucial for any national reconciliation and reparations.

I was intrigued and puzzled about why so many of the thousands of black men lynched following reconstruction were castrated. Castration, according to psychoanalytic theories, is the punishment meted out by a father on his transgressive oedipal son (the Oedipus complex). Yet, the most striking public demonstration of this punishment was meted out by white men on black men, many lynchings consisting of public celebrations involving hundreds, if not thousands, of white folks with children and family members in tow. It seemed that white men presumed a paternal function, whereas black men were treated as child-like dependents (called 'boy' or 'son'). I wanted to understand why.

The paper explores how race relations during and after transatlantic slavery were often sexualized and familialized. In the U.S. black folk were made to serve as child-like dependents on their white owners and, later, their white sharecropping landlords or other employers. After slavery, this sexualization translated into bodily and spatial containment measures, especially lynching and segregation. We have sublimated the violence of these containments, such that today we see most urban U.S. landscapes as relatively innocuous. We need to re-examine the origins of the violences that created these spaces and subordinated bodies—violences that continue through the present in a number of institutionalized and cultural ways.

Heidi J. Nast
Associate Professor of International Studies and Geography
De Paul University
990 West Fullerton
Chicago, IL 60614