Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Across markers of difference (race, gender, ethnicity), psychic and material colonization enforces dominant cultural prescripts. The stranger dwells in shadow, caught between abject projections and melancholic demands to strive for all that they are not. One heavily cathected identity marker is disability, which in phantasy supports a reassuringly immutable boundary between the “damaged” and the “whole”. Projective identification positions the disability community as custodians of disavowed, yet universal human realities such as bodily frailty, interdependency and vulnerability. But here the other lies dormant within the colonist, as disability awaits us all, confounding authoritarian ideals and inviting depressive position functioning based on the recognition of human commonality.
Source: Psychoanalysis Culture & Society
Author: Brian Watermeyer
Institution: Stellenbosch University
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,690
Funder: Universiteit Stellenbosch
OpenAlex ID: W7168957290