Striking Features: Psychoanalysis and Racial Passing Narratives

How does psychoanalysis animate racial passing and how does racial passing inspire psychoanalysis? Despite long-held beliefs that the two have nothing in common, Ramon poses that psychoanalysis is relevant for understanding the reasons behind jumping the color line. Beginning with the premise that Sigmund Freud created psychoanalysis to contend with his own anxieties about race, Ramon explores canonical and non-canonical passing narratives using psychoanalytic perspectives. He closely reads...