Psychoanalysis and Reproductive Justice: Reflections on Dobbs and the Possibilities of Psychoanalytic Political Praxis

Abstract

This essay addresses the aftermath of Dobbs, the Supreme Court Decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, by looking to what can be learned from other countries, specifically psychoanalytically-informed praxis. Focusing on the role of psychoanalysts in particular, and psychoanalysis, more generally, in Argentina, I make the case for a psychoanalytic political praxis. This engages a Black feminist commitment to reproductive justice, a more expansive frame for politics that can embrace intersectional aims across a range of policy issues connected to the human right to have or to not have children, in a social and political context that supports the common good and facilitates human and environmental flourishing. In doing so, I highlight psychoanalysis’s somewhat hidden history of political commitment and engagement, particularly in terms of the interpersonal approach. I argue that only a sustained commitment from progressive forces, including among those in psychoanalysis, can forestall the further encroachment of authoritarian, anti-democratic forces operating in the US.

Keywords:

• Black feminism
• reproductive justice
• Dobbs
• Green Tide
• abortion
• liminality

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd

Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd, JD, Ph.D., is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University-New Brunwick and an advanced candidate in the William Alanson White Institute Licensure Qualifying Program. Her latest book, Re-Imagining Black Women: A Critique of Post-Feminist and Post-Racial Melodrama in Culture and Politics (NYU Press, 2021), fuses work on feminist theory, Black and US race and ethnic politics, and psychoanalysis to examine the production of Blacks as liminal subjects.