Philosophy
Wayne Wapeemukwa is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. He specializes in the Critical Philosophy of Race, Indigenous philosophy, and Social and Political Philosophy.
Oedipal Empire
This article gives a psychoanalytic critique of the (so-called) ‘Indian legislations’ of settler-states. From a psychoanalytic perspective, such legislation can be viewed as entrenching an ‘Oedipalized’ relationship in which the settler-state subordinates Indigenous Peoples as ‘wards’ in need of civilizational development. It integrates insights from Frantz Fanon, Jacques Lacan, and Achille Mbembe to critically reflect on the Oedipus Complex in colonial context and provide a new frame for timely questions of colonialism, Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Oedipal foundations of psychoanalysis itself.
Contagion Castration
Here I consider anti-Indigenous environmental racism through comparing Lacan’s topology of extimacy and Fanon’s theory of sociogeny. I argue against Lacan’s quietist politics by advancing Fanonian militarism as a prophylactic for settler-colonialism which is, I contend, a ‘sociogenic’ sickness of the Land.
Parallaxes of Oedipal Violence
In my contribution to this anthology I argue that Sophocles’ Oedipus exceeds Freud’s psychoanalytic categories as well as Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s conceptualization of tragic consciousness. In the age of Trump, Oedipus is best understood as a mnemonic of social violence: Make Oedipus Great Again!
Neighborly Love
In this brief essay I elucidate Lacan and Freud’s psychoanalyses on the ‘commandment to love thy neighbour’ and racism to shed light on how liberal-multicultural tolerance exacerbates racial tensions. In sum I provide an argument for why love cannot be the answer to fascism.