Questions, Quotes, & Summary

Seshadri-Crooks (1994) highlights common feminist and post-colonial critiques of psychoanalysis by using the context of India to demonstrate that psychoanalysis requires revision. Throughout the article, the author draws upon the lacunae in Freudian psychoanalysis, as it pertains to the history of psychoanalysis and culture in India. Sashardi-Crooks uses Third World Feminism to think through the ways that traditional psychoanalysis lacked conceptualizing the female subject and the cultural worlds that colonial subjects inhabited. Ultimately, the author calls for a revision of psychoanalysis; one that is more nuanced and engages with a multiplicity of cultures and gendered subjects. Below are quotes that I found useful for understanding the text:  175-176 - “How then does a Third World academic feminist address the twinned disciplines of feminism and psychoanalysis? In the following, I consider the possibility of a political use of psychoanalysis in a Third World feminist context-specifically that of India-and the necessary revisions that this appropriation would expect  these two disciplines.” 177 - “The above two factors raise for the non-Western analyst the cardinal question of access to theory: Who can legitimately lay claim to psychoanalytical knowledge? 6 How is the discourse of the analyst authorized?” 194 - “The difficulty of psychoanalysis for the non-Western theorist thus turns on (1) making the claim to individuality and reason, so integral for his claim to the profession and (2) the repression of the racialized and gendered identity of the analyst.”200-201 - “My motivation in calling for the historicization of the ‘India psyche’ is not to discredit psychoanalytic concepts, but rather t open questions about how far psychoanalysis in a non-Western context  can theorize, rather than smooth over, the historical ruptures and the epistemic violence engendered by colonialism, with regard to the (re-)inscription of subjectivity as such.” 209 - “Ultimately, a revised psychoanalysis has far more explanatory power for postcolonial women than has been acknowledged. It can be deployed as a political discourse insofar as it enables women to confront cultural nationalism without merely accepting or rejecting it.” Seshadri-Crooks echoes many of the aversions I have to traditional psychoanalysis. However, this piece is relatively dated (1994). So I am wondering, what contemporary revisions have really been made with respect to her critiques of psychoanalysis? Considering the multiplicity and assemblage of subject positions and cultures, can there ever be universal theories in psychoanalysis or is that impossible (and a waste of time)?