ABSTRACT
The “immigrant” position calls forth a sense of “strangeness” as a constructed Other. What happens when the self is experienced as a limited, hybridized version of the self one might otherwise be, with opportunity to shape one’s identity? Intersubjectivity is conceptualized as a generative, developmental space in which the “I-ness of me” locates fertile ground for such a project. How do analyst and patient negotiate mutual experiences of alienation in a shared culture of origin, as they encounter experiences of foreignness in a foreign land? As with relational spaces, the construct “immigrant” is positioned as a thing in itself – a transitional space – in which Otherness might be interrogated. The work of crossing boundaries at the intersections of race and class is discussed, as two Jamaicans, embedded in the power of reggae music, engage in psychoanalytic and socio-political “talk.” Or, is it that we dance?
