Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia: A Conversation Among Artemis Christinaki, Amrita Narayanan, and Avgi Saketopoulou

ABSTRACT

This transcribed conversation of an online dialogue between Artemis Christinaki, Amrita Narayanan, and Avgi Saketopoulou introduces readers to Saketopoulou’s recently published book, Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia. With astute questions and through a series of probing observations, Christinaki and Narayanan engage the author, opening up crucial dimensions of psychoanalysis, gender and sexuality studies, and politics. The exchange tracks the three main signifiers of the book, risk, race, and traumatophilia, and articulates Saketopoulou’s critical concern with the traumatophobic logics rippling through the field. What emerges is a rich discussion of how Saketopoulou’s three terms work within psychoanalysis and the risks, opportunities, and challenges they unfurl in the clinic and in the broader field of psychosocial and psychoanalytic studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest are reported by the authors(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Avgi Saketopoulou

Avgi Saketopoulou, Psy.D., is a psychoanalyst on faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, where she also trained. She is the author of Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia in the Sexual Cultures Series at NYU Press and co-author of Gender Without Identity from the Unconscious in Translation Press.

Artemis Christinaki

Artemis Christinaki, Ph.D., is an Honorary Research Fellow in Education within the School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED) at the University of Manchester. During the preparation of this special issue, she was a lecturer in Global Health at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI). Her Ph.D. research critically explored the politics, or the role, of psychosocial support in the refugee camps of Greece. Her main research interests lie at the intersection of migration and refugee studies, critical social theory, critical psychology, psychoanalysis, feminism, and postcolonialism.

Amrita Narayanan

Amrita Narayanan, Ph.D., is a practicing clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. Amrita’s research interests are in cultural factors in sexuality, psychotherapy, and the history of psychoanalysis. She is the author of Women’s Sexuality and Modern India: In a Rapture of Distress (Oxford University Press, 2023).