For an Anti-capitalist Psychology of Community

ISBN-13: 9783030996987 / Angielski

Nick Malherbe

Opis

Anti-capitalist political struggle is a site of struggling psychologies. Conscious political action is never far from unconscious desire, and the fight for material justice is always also the fight for dignity and psychological well-being. Yet, how might community psychologists conceive of their discipline in a way that opposes the very capitalist political economy that, historically, most of the psy-disciplines have bolstered in return for disciplinary legitimacy?  In its consideration of an anti-capitalist psychology of community, this book does not ignore or try to resolve the contradictory position of such a psychology. Instead, it draws on these contradictions to enliven psychology to the shifting demands - both creative and destructive - of a community-centred anti-capitalism. Using practical examples, the book deals with the psychological components of building community-centred social movements that challenge neoliberal capitalism as a political system, an ideology, and a mode of governing rationality. The book also offers several theoretical contributions that grapple with how an anti-capitalist psychology of community can remain attentive to the psychological elements of anti-capitalist struggle; what the psychological can tell us about anti-capitalist politics; and how these politics can shape the psychological.

Spis treści

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION In this chapter, I will outline the traditions I draw upon when using the terms ‘anti-capitalism’ ‘a psychology of community’. After outlining these two terms (both of which make up an anti-capitalist psychology of community, the book’s central concern), I will map out each of the following chapters. 

CHAPTER 2: Conceptions of Neoliberal Capitalism: Considerations for an Anti-capitalist Psychology of Community • Capitalism as a Political Project • Capitalism as Ideology • Capitalism as Normative Rationality • Considering Capitalism Expansively • Community Psychology and Capitalism As this book’s central focus is anti-capitalism, the first chapter seeks to map out, for those who practice a psychology of community, what is meant by the term capitalism. In other words, this first chapter seeks to clarify the object of the book’s critique. As such, I outline neoliberal capitalism (i.e., the contemporary mode of global capitalism) in a relatively expansive way.

Rather than denoting what neoliberal capitalism is, I argue that it is a loose (but not an empty) signifier10. As such, there are various approaches we can take to understanding capitalism, namely, capitalism as a political project, an ideology, and a mode normative reason. I then speak to how each approach relates to the other and argue that an expansive anti-capitalism must consider all three. However, despite the fact that we cannot separate out any of these three approaches from the others, I argue that one will always take precedence in anti-capitalist work. Put differently, because anti-capitalism will, regrettably, be unable to take on the totality of capitalism, it is useful to enter into anti-capitalist activism through either politics, ideology or normative reason, and from here seek to connect with and address other formations of anti-capitalist resistance. Therefore, this chapter separates capitalism (and, in the following chapters, anti-capitalist resistance) into politics, ideology and normative reason in an artificial but necessary way. Following this, I recount how capitalism, conceived of in this way, has intersected with community psychology, and what this means for those who practice what I have called a psychology of community. 

CHAPTER 3: Resisting the Capitalist Political Project • Political organising • Community-building as future-building • Solidarity-making • Issues of reflexivity • Case Illustration • Conclusion This chapter will be concerned primarily with putting a psychology of community to work for community-based anti-capitalist resistance movements (i.e., formalised anti-capitalist politics), with a focus on Africa and South-based resistance as well as resistance on a global scale. The central thrust of this chapter argues that a psychology of community must bend in accordance to the demands of anti-capitalist community struggle, rather than vice versa. At the same time, psychologists can work with activists to challenge potential and actually existing regressive elements within these movements. The first three sub-sections detail some of the ways by which psychologists of community can become involved in anti-capitalist community resistance, and the final sub-section speaks to how psychologists of community can conduct

10 Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism's stealth revolution. Zone Books.

themselves when engaging with community activists and participating in community struggles. I conclude by illustrating what has been discussed in this chapter with an example from my own community-engaged work, particularly, a participatory filmmaking project that was conducted with activists and other community members from a low-income community in South Africa. 

CHAPTER 4: Resisting Capitalist Ideology • Questions of subjectivity • Art • Re-symbolisation • Ideas of culture • Case Illustration • Conclusion This chapter addresses a psychology of community to capitalist ideology, that is, a social process by which the contradictions of capitalism are obscured and made to appear as distinctive differences that are to be tolerated rather than overcome11, with illustrative examples drawn from South Africa 12. Here, I seek to outline how psychologists of community can work with community members for purposes of de-ideologisation13. I consider questions of subjective interpellation, the creation of art, re-symbolisation, and ideas of culture. I insist that none of these areas, in and of themselves, are able to offer a totalising vision of anti-capitalist resistance but, together, they can afford us insights into how psychologists of community can make themselves of use to the task of not only resisting capitalism at the political and economic levels, but also in creating new ideological formations that reject capitalism’s oppressive ideological logic. The chapter concludes with a case illustration from the same participatory filmmaking project mentioned in the previous chapter. 

CHAPTER 5: Resisting Capitalist Rationality • Establishing counter-hegemonies and the question of discourse • The everyday

11 Therborn, G. (1980). The ideology of power and the power of ideology. Verso.

12 See, e.g., Mario Matsinhe, D. (2011). Africa's fear of itself: The ideology of Makwerekwere in South Africa. Third World Quarterly, 32(2), 295-313.

13 Martín-Baró, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation psychology. Harvard University Press.

• Epistemology and re-presentation • Love and care • Case Illustration • Conclusion In this chapter, I offer a nuanced take on what psychologists of community can offer community struggles that seek to create counter-hegemonic rationalities that oppose capitalist greed, accumulation, unfettered growth, and competitive individualism. To do so, I highlight the importance of discourse (and post-structuralist discourse theory in particular), people’s quotidian lives, questions of epistemology and, finally, notions of love and care, all considered within a South African context but with a view towards the Global South and the world. Considered as a whole, this chapter assists us in envisioning and building upon emancipatory rationalities as well as liberatory ways of conceiving the social and the individual. The chapter concludes with a case illustration from the same participatory filmmaking project discussed in the previous two chapters. 

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION

In the final chapter, I conclude by discussing questions of future-building and hope in relation to anti-capitalism, and the place of a psychology of community therein.

O autorze

Nick Malherbe is a community psychologist interested in violence, visual methods, and discourse. He works with social movements, cultural workers, and young people. He is based in South Africa.