A Postcolonial Psychoanalysis of Determinism in Native Son Richard Nathaniel Wright College

Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son, exemplifies classic, African-American literature that raises serious questions about how deeply racial oppression damages Blacks. Lacanian psychoanalytic criticism exposes how racism subjects Blacks to the impotence assumed under determinism by denying nearly any confirmation of free will. Wright’s narrative depicts the psychological and existential struggle of adolescent, black youth to feel any sense of agency in life because the institution of racial oppression impinges upon their psychological development; consequently, a strong-willed, black man may prove incapable of accepting a reality devoid of agency and dangerously struggle to create agency where there is none.

According to Dobie, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory differed from Freudian theory most significantly in that “Freud’s concept of the unconscious as a force that determines our actions and beliefs shook the long-held ideal that we are beings who can control our own destinies” while Lacan asserted that the unconscious was not some peripheral force acting upon the conscious self but, rather, the core of the self—“the nucleus of our being” (Dobie 69). Freud’s theory considered the unconscious to be peripheral, not central. The...