Eco-Transference: Dwelling with Others in a Precarious World

In the sixth century BCE, a pre-Socratic philosopher, Xenophanes, “was scathing about Homer and Hesiod because they ‘ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealings, adulteries and deceivings’” (Grayling, 2019, p.26). Instead of facing our shame and guilt, we have transferred it to the gods, excusing or even legitimizing our own foibles and failings. Xenophanes also wrote, “if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen” (p.26). Xenophanes would have been mostly comfortable with Freud's notion of transference, though he seemed to suggest that transference is applicable to other species. Freud would have agreed with Xenophanes, but he developed the notion of transference in the context of the clinical setting. In short, both men would have agreed that transference is a ubiquitous reality in human life. Collectively or individually, we take our experiences, beliefs, values, and desires and act “as if” they are fitting or true for this or that context and relationship. Consider a few general illustrations.

Since Aristotle much of Western political philosophies have projected onto women the belief that they have less capacity for reason and, therefore, are deemed to be inferior to men. This belief has been ensconced in social-political apparatuses that have insured that this “belief” is seen as an unquestioned reality or truth. The rise of capitalism in Europe accompanied apparatuses of imperialism that transferred onto native peoples the belief that they are inferior, which functioned to confirm the superiority of “civilized” colonizers (see Chibber, 2013; Mills, 1997, 2017; Robinson, 1983). Freud's use of the terms “primitives” and “savages” in referring to and infantilizing Indigenous peoples is a clear illustration of colonizing transferences.1