Psychoanalysis and the Postcolonial Genealogy of Queer Theory

In his final lecture, Freud and the Non-European, Edward Said drew our attention to a fundamental contribution of psychoanalysis to political life. Through a reading of Moses and Monotheism, Said showed how Freud's unresolved sense of identity is revealed by his desire that Moses be Egyptian. When Said finds Freud haunted by the trace of Egypt at the origin of Jewish identity, he locates a spectral effect of alterity in a text purporting to expose a norm of identity; instead of establishing the grounds of that norm, Said's Freud symptomatically exposes a desire to be other. This in turn inspires Said's hope that textual moments like this can become sites of affinity and relation that undo the certainties of enmity. © 2013 Cambridge University Press.