Between the Psyche and the Social is the first collection of its kind to offer original, interdisciplinary essays on questions of social subjectivity. Contributors engage the disciplines of feminism, psychoanalytic theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory, film theory, literary criticism, and philosophy to transform the psychoanalytic study of social oppression. The book considers such questions as, How can psychoanalysis and critical social theory engage and transform one another? How can the social dimensions of subjectivity be understood within the framework of a classic psychoanalytic theory that rejects the social domain that gives rise to subjectivity in the first place? Between the Psyche and the Social reclaims the contributions of psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, postcolonial, and political theories in order to change the parameters of the current debates on the social dimensions of subjectivity.

Series Information:
Opening Out: Feminism for Today

Desiring Whiteness provides a compelling new interpretation of how we understand race. Race is often seen to be a social construction. Nevertheless, we continue to deploy race thinking in our everyday life as a way of telling people apart visually.
How do subjects become raced? Is it common sense to read bodies as racially marked? Employing Lacan's theories of the subject and sexual difference, Seshadri-Crooks explores how the discourse of race parallels that of sexual difference in making racial identity a fundamental component of our thinking.
Through close readings of literary and film texts, Seshardi-Crooks also investigates whether race is a system of difference equally determined by Whiteness. She argues that it is in relation to Whiteness that systems of racial classification are organized, endowing it with a power to shape human difference.

"The Pre-Occupation of Postcolonial Studies" contains essays by both leading figures and younger scholars engaged in the field of postcolonial studies. In this state-of-the-field reader, editors Fawzia Afzal-Khan and Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks have created a dynamic forum for contributors from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary vantage points to question both the limits and the limitations of postcolonial thought.
Since it burst on the academic scene as the "hot" new disciplinary field during the final decade of the twentieth century, postcolonial studies has faced criticism from those who question its "troubling" trajectories, its sometimes suspect epistemological and pedagogical methods, and its relatively narrow focus. With diverse essays that emerge from such disciplines as South Asian, Latin American, Arab, and Jewish studies, this volume responds to skeptics and adherers alike, addressing not only the broad theoretical issues at stake within the field but also the position of the field itself within the academy, as well as its relationship to modern, postmodern, and Marxist discourses. Contributors offer critiques on ahistorical and universalizing tendencies in postcolonial work and confront the need for scholars to attend to issues of class, ideology, and the effects of neocolonial practices. Seeking to broaden the field's traditionally literary spectrum of methodologies, these essayists take up large thematic issues to examine specific sites of colonial activities with all of their historical, political, and cultural significance. Closing the volume is an insightful interview with Homi Bhabha, in which he discusses postcolonial studies in the context of contemporary cultural politics and theory.
"The Pre-Occupation of Postcolonial Studies" not only offers an overview of the discipline but also pushes and pulls at the edges of postcolonial studies, offering a comprehensive view of the field's diversity of thought and envisioning clear pathways for its future.

"Contributors." Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Ali Behdad, Homi Bhabha, Daniel Boyarin, Neil Larsen, Saree Makdisi, Joseph Massad, Walter Mignolo, Hamid Naficy, Ngugi Wa Thingo, Timothy B. Powell, R. Radhakrishnan, Bruce Robbins, Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, Ella Shohat, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan