Treatment is geopolitical: On Lacan’s decolonial clinic

This essay considers two Lacanian texts, namely Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (1948) and Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (1969), to highlight how Lacan situated treatment amidst the geopolitical antagonism between coloniser and colonised. This is premised upon his conviction that treatment cannot be conceived without taking into account psychoanalysis’ deep historical linkages to capitalism which he often saw to be a global development. While this remains a largely unrecognized aspect of Lacanian theory, it provides a lot of insights as to how the decolonial clinic could be conceived as psychoanalysis continues to globalize alongsinde the dominant psy-disciplines.