ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author addresses the question of how we respond to and deal with expressions of trauma and violence connected with racial suffering. This chapter focuses on how the images that appear as phantoms in the aftermath of social catastrophes are representations of unconscious narratives expressing the inner psychological dimensions of culture’s working interiority, spinning phantom narratives that challenge the concreteness of the outer societal setting in which they have emerged. These phantoms are once again shown to come with an underlying narrative structure that reveals how the unconscious, working at the group and individual levels, is richly archived with intergenerational, political, and social contexts within which individuals and groups may have foundered in the past, yet can still provide containment for present-day catastrophes if recollected with sufficient understanding. Such narratives often allow us to see how suffering may be potentially processed psychologically and related to symbolically. To clarify how such narratives manage to appear, the author examines the Black Lives Matter movement as an expression of a phantom narrative through an examination of the continued phenomenon of shootings by police officers of disproportionately large numbers of unarmed Black and Hispanic young men who are American citizens. Using Jordon Peele’s film Get Out and the James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro, the author explores projections, both personal and cultural.
