ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a racist state of mind, which is quick to expel and lodge the anxiety outside the self rather than process it. Restoration fantasies attempt to restore the individual or community to a former state of completeness, but it is a delusional idea that it is possible to return to this mythical homeland as a solution to profound anxiety. As Enoch Powell’s speech implies, to accommodate the other, and face up to the painful work of mourning, would be tantamount to a descent into madness and suicidal despair. The speech conveys racism’s preoccupation that concretely equates the physical body or presence of the ethnic other with psyche and nationhood—an equation that is clearly evident on the international stage, where geographical spaces and boundaries arouse primitive passions. Racism becomes a battle with an imaginary couple, which is being played out on the stage of ethnicity.
