The Power of Whiteness as a Mythology of the Good

Join us for this fascinating talk on the power of whiteness as a mythology of the good.

Amidst increasing mainstream recognition that whiteness is an identity position which implies an orientation to power and privilege the way this orientation manifests is highly contested and often misunderstood. One commonly recognised affective mode of whiteness is the fragility and defensiveness through which whiteness protects itself against interrogation. This is largely a defensiveness driven by the desire to resist seeing the white self as violent and violating of others, to resist seeing the ‘darker’ side of the self. It is a defence against the discomfort of recognising whiteness as a manifestation of fear, shame, guilt. When we begin to understand whiteness as a master signifier which works as a form of general protection against the human experience of difference, uncertainty and related anxiety, we have starting point from which to see how it sutures into everyday meanings and practices such as ideals of good professionalism.

The heart of my paper today explores how whiteness works as a master signifier to create and hold together ideas of the good health and social care professional and to situate some professionals outside of the idea of the good, as the bad, unhelpful or problematic professional. It builds out of the analysis of an imagined dialogue between a range of health and social care professionals around what it is like to be a professional in the context of health and social care change. Through the interpretation of the symbolic, material and affective dynamics in a dialogue about profession we can see the ways race and Whiteness comes to be the invisible frame for ideas of profession through intersecting ideals of gender, class, generation. 

As people working with emotion, those working with psychoanalytic ideas have an opportunity here to enter into the debate on fragility and defensiveness to help societal understandings of power and its relationship to affect and material reality and personal and social discomfort. And yet, there is evidence of white defence here too in the shape and profile of the psychoanalytic body of ideas, its professional profile and ways of practicing. So; the questions remain what should be done? What can be done? How can community be reinvented? What does that reinvention mean and what shape could it take?