Lacan's psycho-analytic evacuation of the rainbow nation identity

Abstract

Given the increasing displacement of the essentialist racial categories of the past and the emergence of often-superficial theorisations of race in terms of the diverse South African experiences of difference and Otherness, this article seeks to reassess and reassert our theoretical frameworks that constitute or question the idea of our rainbow nation identity formations. The article employs Lacanian psychoanalysis to contest rainbowism for its under-theorised and often simplistic perspectives on the one hand, and its ideological and limited representations on the other.

Keywords

• rainbow nation
• identity
• Lacanian psycho-analysis
• rainbowism
• South African identity