Lene Auestad

Bio: Lene Auestad is an academic researcher from University of Oslo. The author has contributed to research in topics: Prejudice (legal term) & Performative utterance. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 5 publications receiving 18 citations. Previous affiliations of Lene Auestad include University of California.

Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice: A Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Dynamics of Social Exclusion and Discrimination

Abstract: This book helps us understand the current resurgence of social prejudice against ethnic minority groups, the logics of scapegoating and the resulting violence. Our time is characterised by a growth in expressed hostility and violence towards people who are perceived as 'others'. Hatred towards and discrimination against minorities is on the rise. This book presents a new understanding of prejudice, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, islamophobia, sexism and homophobia. It combines philosophy with psychoanalytic thinking, sociology and psycho-social studies, analysing the unconscious elements of social processes. The author makes a case for framing a questioning of prejudice, not in terms of normality versus pathology or deviance, but in what is socially unconscious. Hypocrisy and double standards are inherent in our social practices, reflecting the contradictions present in our thinking about these issues: that we both believe and do not believe in equality.

Speech, Repetition, Renewal

Abstract: This chapter presents a phenomenology of hate speech asking what people do when they speak. I argue that hate speech relies on magical thinking as described by Freud. It is performative‚ constituting acts of displacing unwanted aspects of oneself onto devalued others. Injurious speech acts, as Butler emphasises, are citational‚ reinforcing or reinserting a cultural pattern of domination. The lack of motivational and contextual transparency in human lives raises the issue of responsibility for unconscious discrimination. What a statement or word presupposes‚ rather than utters directly‚ may go beyond what a speaker or writer intends to express. I end by questioning the conditions for imaginative renewal—for change in discriminatory utterances.

Splitting, attachment and instrumental rationality. A re-view of Menzies Lyth's social criticism

Abstract: In this article the author argues that the fruitful conceptual innovations in Menzies Lyth's 1960 study of nurses, in particular her development of the concept of splitting, was achieved through her synthesis of Kleinian psychoanalytic thinking and attachment theory This move allowed her to situate the psychoanalytic subject and to present what could be read as an original critique of instrumental rationality, although insufficient attention to power relations constitutes a flaw in this conceptual approach

Basic trust and alienation or "we have nothing to reproach ourselves with"

Abstract: The article examines prejudice from the point of view of what it performs. Using Winnicott’s understanding of ‘basic trust’ transposed into a social context, I argue that discrimination undermines ‘basic trust’. Fassbinder’s film Fear Eats the Soul (1974) shows how ‘everyday racism’ impacts on the addressee’s sense of self and surrounding others, and orientation in the world. Since ‘basic trust’ denotes something that is usually pre-reflectively taken for granted, it is not within the range of an average person’s imagination in a normal setting to know what it means for it to be taken away. I argue that Fear Eats the Soul does some work towards compensating for this absence.

Traces of Violence and Freedom of Thought

Abstract: We are all tainted, whether we are actively engaged or not, by violence in its countless and troubling manifestations. Images and fragments of traumatic and violent scenarios are transported from one generation’s unconscious to that of another, leading to cycles of repetition and retaliation, restricting one’s freedom to imagine alternatives and inhabit alternative positions. This collection of essays focus on the workings of violence and power. All the articles work within a psychosocial framework by unsettling the boundaries between psyche-social. Four themes are addressed: violence of speech, violence and domination, repetition and violence, and the possibility of reparation or renewal. The articles point to the fusion of temporalities and argue that the past persists in the present.

The return of religious Antisemitism? The evidence from World Values Survey data

Abstract: 1) Background: This paper addresses the return of religious Antisemitism by a multivariate analysis of global opinion data from 28 countries. 2) Methods: For the lack of any available alternative we used the World Values Survey (WVS) Antisemitism study item: rejection of Jewish neighbors. It is closely correlated with the recent ADL-100 Index of Antisemitism for more than 100 countries. To test the combined effects of religion and background variables like gender, age, education, income and life satisfaction on Antisemitism, we applied the full range of multivariate analysis including promax factor analysis and multiple OLS regression. 3) Results: Although religion as such still seems to be connected with the phenomenon of Antisemitism, intervening variables such as restrictive attitudes on gender and the religion-state relationship play an important role. Western Evangelical and Oriental Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are performing badly on this account, and there is also a clear global North-South divide for these phenomena. 4) Conclusions: Challenging patriarchic gender ideologies and fundamentalist conceptions of the relationship between religion and state, which are important drivers of Antisemitism, will be an important task in the future. Multiculturalism must be aware of prejudice, patriarchy and religious fundamentalism in the global South.