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Simon Clarke has written a fine primer on the intertwined themes of social theory, psychoanalysis and racism. The central thesis is that psychoanalysis deepens our understanding of sociology, and, more specifically, that getting beyond structural racism requires attention to affective forces that are best conceptualized in psychoanalysis. Clarke is not breaking new ground here; he presents ideas that most readers of this journal will find familiar and congenial. The main aim of this book is to provide an introductory guide for students: each chapter contains boxed examples/elaborations of theoretical points and a summary of key terms, and there is a background section at the end of the book, which lists suggested readings, websites, and journals. Still, Clarke's discussions of various thinkers such as Bauman, Fanon, Fromm, and especially representatives from the Kleinian tradition, are illuminating and well worth reading.
Clarke begins with a presentation of recent debates about terms such as race, racism, ethnicity, and diaspora. He contrasts those views that see racism as having its source in containing fear of the Other to those which maintain that racism is defined by exclusionary practices. He also explores modernity as the distinctive background for understanding what racism is, citing Zygmunt Bauman's notion of the “gardening state,” wherein the state uses rational design to cultivate citizens as useful plants and weed out others, brutally if necessary (p 45). Next, Clarke moves in the direction of dealing with subtle, unacknowledged aspects of racism - manifest in the example of inequities in education for Blacks in Britain. The “new racism” refrains from a discourse in which minorities are deemed inferior, in favor of an insistence on and imposition of difference.
In turning to explicate the term ethnicity, Clarke raises several concerns. While he appreciates how the term is invoked to capture a sense of common, shared culture, and even solidarity, he worries