THE SPRING DEBACLE
Can the subaltern speak at APsA?
BY BILL GLOVER
Artwork by Tate Overton
THIS QUOTE, attributed to Voltaire, sounds naive today when we are so ready to kill off those whose speech we disapprove of. The controversy over Dr. Lara Sheehi presenting at the June APsA meeting has mirrored a broader polarization of American society with regard to speech. Speaking at APsA has become contested ground. Many protested Lara’s noninvitation as silencing her, while others claimed a silent majority approves.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
I will not repeat the details of the controversy but instead will focus on the general breakdown of collegiality in speaking and listening to each other at APsA. Most of the attention, pro and con, has focused on two individuals, Dr. Sheehi and Dr. Kerry Sulkowicz, then our president, who carried the explosive large group dynamics for us. While they volunteered for their respective roles, we projected our conflicts onto Lara and Kerry and are collectively responsible for the controversy. The path to truth and hope for repair requires us to own those projections.
Initially, out of solidarity with Kerry and Dan Prezant, the colleagues and friends who followed me as president, I blamed the turmoil on the underlying governance conflict between the Executive Committee and Program Committee. I was aghast as the animosity and splitting deepened. Looking for insight, I turned to Gayatri Spivak’s landmark 1988 essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
“Subaltern” was a British army term for a lower-ranking officer. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian revolutionary socialist thinker, adapted the term to describe marginalized people and groups whose agency and voices are excluded from society to preserve the “cultural hegemony of the bourgeoisie.” The concept resonated in post-Raj India with anti-colonialists who founded the journal Subaltern Studies and an academic specialization striving to learn from below, from the oppressed and voiceless members of society. Use of the term has expanded to include anyone with inferior rank or station in a social, political, or other hierarchy. You can be subaltern in one hierarchy but not in others. When someone is identified by what they are not they are subaltern, with their power and voice diminished by their lesser status.
In this view, Lara Sheehi, racial/ethnic and sexual/gender minorities, and the new categories of members welcomed into APsA by recent bylaw amendments are all subalterns. The controversy over Sheehi speaking suggests that the answer to Spivak’s question is no, the subaltern may not speak at APsA after all. Despite our professed welcoming of diversity, her voice is apparently contingent and can be canceled at any moment. We are ambivalent about a subaltern, in this case an anti-colonial Arab woman, speaking her truth. All who might identify as subaltern at APsA have reason to fear that they too could be silenced. This includes the psychotherapists, scholars, and researchers we invite to join us who have been subaltern in the psychoanalytic world for so long. Lara and others resigned, absenting themselves from our discourse in protest, while prospective members turned away. The message threw a cold blanket on our invitation to join by alienating the diversity we aim to welcome. In our speaking controversy Kerry came to represent another hierarchy not heeding the subaltern, but he too was silenced, alienating those who sympathized with his position.
There is another silence at APsA. Many of us are reluctant to enter public debate, particularly in the thrust and parry of the APsA listserv, now even more so for fear of being called out for enacting racism. As subaltern voices challenge the hegemony of traditional powers at APsA, many of us are silent about the changes underway. The Holmes Commission report finds that
A climate of fear (typically of retaliation) impedes needed change … White faculty and candidates were fearful of showing racism or ignorance. These strong subjective states among BIPOC and white faculty and candidates can lead to superficial and ineffectual engagement of race and racism, and even stasis.
In our controversy Lara Sheehi was not the only one canceled. Feeling he could no longer lead when his critics dominated the listserv and the Board did not support him, Kerry Sulkowicz resigned as president and fell silent. My formulation is that a backlog of ambivalence about the many changes at APsA inflamed the controversy. In a condensation, Kerry represented a part of the Association we usually consider “superaltern,” a part which experienced a turning of the tables and a moment of subalternity. I hesitate to suggest any equivalence between the momentary subalternity of a majority and the enduring subalternity of a minority, but the unconscious is neither fair nor politically correct. Everyone harbors unconscious transgressive wishes to murder, assault, and dominate others, and we all can experience victimization.
Is there a silent majority opposing change at APsA? Some members comment privately that the changes are “not psychoanalytic enough” and that our turn to the social dilutes psychoanalysis. They too feel it is not safe to speak at APsA. Silence can be a passive-aggressive delay, a flight tactic, while aggressive opposition becomes a fight tactic, together producing Bion’s basic assumption group of fight/flight instead of a cooperative working group.
The phrase “silent majority” has deep ties to conservative politics and arguably played a role in polarizing the listserv debates. It was first used by Nixon and recently exhumed by Trump who deployed it as a campaign slogan with clearly racist undertones—i.e., the silent majority is implicitly the White majority. The silent majority is evoked not only to preserve psychoanalytic identity and values but also privilege. I do not think there is a silent majority at APsA opposed to change. I believe that we want change but are conflicted about how to achieve it. Most of us are bystanders. I suggest that “abdicating bystanders,” Stuart Twemlow’s term for those who sit on the sidelines, is more accurate than “silent majority.”
At our worst, we labeled Lara an anti-Semitic terrorist and Kerry a racist tyrant. The accusations of anti-Semitism against Lara included allegations that her husband supported the terrorist organization Hezbollah, locating them outside of civilized mores, deserving of silencing, and adding to the constant threats and opprobrium they endure. When he would not agree that his stance toward the Program Committee was an authoritarian, racial enactment, Kerry was portrayed as a racist tyrant who must resign, eclipsing his many contributions to human rights work and to APsA.
Such accusations are standard political tactics to discredit an opponent. “Racism” and “terrorism” are two of the strongest moral condemnations of our time. As the rhetoric heated up there was a rush to judgment. Both sides reproached each other in a flurry of superego-charged projections.
“We have a standoff where the subaltern shouts to be heard and some clap back while the majority don’t speak.”
We have a standoff where the subaltern shouts to be heard and some clap back while the majority don’t speak. We all need to engage and not retreat into enclaves. Both the implementation of change and preservation of values are weakened by our polarization. Cui bono? If we are divided who benefits? The enemies of psychoanalysis and of our humanist values—those to whom psychoanalysis is marginalized and discredited.
What is a psychoanalytic approach? In our turn to the social we want not only to recognize the social in theory and clinical practice but also to bring a psychoanalytic perspective to the group and political dynamics of society.
Spivak can help us here. The first and obvious reading of her essay is as a straightforward call to listen to the subaltern. In another reading she raises the problem of representation: who speaks for the subaltern? The example Spivak gives is the Indian custom of Sati-sacrifice, where a widow joins her husband on his funeral pyre. Spivak points out that the Indian patriarchy spoke for the widow and claimed she took her life out of free will while the British who colonized India claimed to be saving her from this barbaric custom, thereby giving her free will. Spivak noted this act where “white men are saving brown women from brown men” is but one example of the supposed beneficence of the Raj legitimizing colonization. Spivak emphasizes that neither patriarchy listened to the wife, a subaltern, for the meaning of the act to her. Along with political representation, she calls for a re-presentation of the subaltern, as in literature, her original field. Art and reportage are best able to re-present the subaltern.
Witnessing George Floyd’s death was a piercing re-presentation of the subaltern speaking, his murder captured on video by Darnella Frazier, a courageous young Black witness. But George Floyd moments are rare. It is well-nigh impossible for the subaltern to speak so directly. They need the tools to speak, the language, delivery, and access to an audience, but the subaltern inhabits a different world. George Floyd’s death speech required re-presentation. But when someone speaks for the subaltern, they bring their own values. The patriarchs of Bengal claimed the widows wished to die with their husbands while the British patriarchy claimed to be saving them. In my reading, Spivak’s thinking implies similar biases for other hierarchies, even the activist ones that see her as a spokeswoman. Our own values and ambitions come into play when we aim to represent the people. Politicians seek power, scholars academic capital, and professionals a monopoly.
It is no coincidence that pandemonium broke out immediately after the expansion of APsA membership. We evoked a desire to belong to a reimagined APsA by those previously excluded, but when our fears of change crystallized around Lara speaking, her exclusion signified the ambivalence of our invitation and disappointed that desire.
This is a soul-defining moment for APsA. Our actions need to match our aspirations for recognizing the social in psychoanalysis. Our commitment to racial equality is challenged. We need to deliver the home we promised. For APsA to be a truly inclusive psychoanalytic community we must work through our projections without silencing anyone to achieve as democratic a consensus as possible.
We need reciprocity in speaking and listening to each other. Too often we speak to prove our belief, to convert others to our cause, or to mobilize our base, rather than to converse with one another in an exchange of views and opinions. Listening means listening to someone, considering what they say, not looking for a riposte to “own” them. We need to tolerate both dissent and pushback.
Can those in the superaltern position listen but also speak and not retreat into enclaves of illusory safety? Can the subaltern speak and be listened to? Can the subalterns listen as well as call out those who say something objectionable, giving their other the space to speak and be listened to? Can we listen without disqualifying each other as terrorists or tyrants, nonanalysts or rigid stereotypes, woke or racist? We know the limits of confrontation in the consulting room, and the same applies in groups and in society. Democratic change requires confrontation leavened with compassion and the courage to listen to the other as we reshape our habitus. Fleeing into enclaves deprives us of the opportunity for the collective working through, which is necessary for real, lasting change.
The national movement for diversity, equity, and inclusion recognizes that it must lead to belonging. If inclusion means opening the door, belonging means being accepted and listened to even when you rock the boat. If expanded membership does not lead to true belonging, it will fail. We have to do more than invite people to join; we have to be willing for our home to be reshaped by and for them as we make APsA their home too.
If there is a silver lining in this controversy it is the passionate engagement of so many members. Enactments are mutually constructed and each of us must reflect on our part. All of us, both active participants and bystanders, are implicated in this traumatic institutional enactment. As much as the final report and recommendations of the Holmes Commission will help us, the work of repair is up to all of us.
“Democratic change requires confrontation leavened with compassion and the courage to listen to the other as we reshape our habitus.”
I believe that both Lara Sheehi and Kerry Sulkowicz deserve our apologies. I don’t mean to equate them or the merit of the positions we’ve projected onto them. The equivalence is that both are used as receptacles for our projections in the fight or flight basic assumption group functioning that APsA so often devolves into. All of us bear responsibility for the breakdown in collegiality and rupture of our community. Repair depends on our ability to own our projections, to speak truthfully, and listen carefully to each other. ■
Bill Glover is a past president of APsA. He has served psychoanalytic institutions locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, and now is on the APsA and IPA boards. He is vice chair of the Psychoanalytic Education Division at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.
Published in issue 57.3, Fall/Winter 2023