Aphanisis: Patricia Williams and Ernest Jones

This article reads between Patricia Williams' The Alchemy of Race and Rights and Ernest Jones's 'repressed' concept of aphanisis, which was first introduced in the 1920s, and is frequently referred to but rarely elaborated in the psychoanalytic literature. Starting from Williams' use of psychoanalysis as a means to think the relation between law, hatred, and culture, the article goes back to Jones's writings from the 1920s-1940s to track the emergence and vicissitudes of aphanisis as a concept. The concept has the potential to make a unique contribution to the development of psychosocial studies and a psychoanalysis of class.