Essay One

The Sublime Art of Making Reparations

Kintsugi, Psychoanalysis, and the Sublimation of Disturbing Realities

“In the last period of his work, Freud […] noticed something new, the strange phenomenon he called splitting of the ego. In this phenomenon, the ego, when faced with a disturbing reality, neither represses it nor denies it. Rather it simultaneously accepts and rejects it, thereby splitting itself into mutually incompatible states. The “side” of the ego that rejects the disturbing reality replaces it with a wish fulfilling fantasy. Here, we see the basic operation of primary process – wish fulfillment and defense working in tandem to get rid of a disturbance. But the new angle on this process is that the ego clearly would not undertake such a complex defensive manoeuvre if it did not in some way know exactly what it appears not to know. [...] [W]hat the ego knows, but defends against, is on the “side” of increased tension, the pain of life. The “side” of the ego that rejects the disturbing reality is self-destructively using wish fulfillment and defense to maintain inertia, the reflexive withdrawal from certain kinds of pain. In other words, the ego attacks its own knowledge of precisely what it needs.”

– Alan Bass from The Work of Psychoanalysis: Play

Part I.

The more that I consider my facticity — my thrownness in space, time, nature, and culture; my being a black man living in the United States of America four-hundred some years after the docking of the White Lion, not a descendant of African American slaves but a descendant of peoples who survived the Belgian genocide in the Congo and the depredations of German and British imperialism in East Africa — that is to say, in other words, the more that I wonder at the world that I must make my home, for better or for worse, the more and more compelled I am to articulate my position on the matter of reparations. 

I do not imagine that my position on reparations is of great significance to my world: I am a black man lacking in stature and authority, who can only speak for himself. Yet I feel compelled to speak on the matter of reparations precisely because few care if I speak, precisely because of my lack of stature and authority, precisely because I am only able to speak for myself and for no one else. It is not that I would gain stature and authority by speaking, nor that I would have the ability to speak for others. To the contrary, above all else, it is because I can only speak for myself that I feel I ought to speak on the matter of reparations. You see, I would like to inspire others who know what I know to do as I am doing, to speak for themselves on the matter of reparations.

Indeed, I am very much speaking to you, my friend and fellow traveler. I am inviting you to speak in chorus with me on the matter of reparations, in spite of the fact that no one has asked us to speak and so few care if we do. As I see it, all radical cultural transformations begin when those who are supposed to remain silent and be spoken for begin to stand up and speak for themselves, taking great care to articulate what they know as best they know how. Ay, and reparations, as I imagine them, would be the most radical of cultural transformations. 

So, here goes nothing, I shall speak for myself as best I know how...