The Annihilations of “Knowing” Moral Collapse: A Discussion of Papers by Deborah Sherman, Sandy Silverman, and Malin Fors

ABSTRACTThis discussion expands on the themes of annihilation and what Apprey terms the “no place” of racial- and gender-based violence. Taking examples from their clinical work, all of the authors here reflect on the terror that was instilled in the wake of the White supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia. The terror was not just sparked by the event but by the response of President Trump declaring there were “good people on both sides,” that is, that White supremacists were “good” people. This shift indicates a profound sense of institutional betrayal that, as Malin Fors’s paper points out, has been central to the United States since the beginning. Integrating ideas from critical race theory, this discussion asks whether psychoanalysis can function to create what Best and Hartman, reflecting on the U.S. history of slavery, termed a “fugitive justice” in the face of what this author considers to be, a foretelling of human extinction.