There is something we need to come to term with. A core section of the electorate will stick to BJ due to his racism and don’t really give a shit about his policies. They care that he stands for regressive & unrestrained mouth that can speak what they dare not say themselves.

I wrote about this in my latest article on silence. The illusion that the white majority entertains. That they are being gagged, silenced, policed will naturally lead to support for those who defy what these pressures, who appear to speak ‘freely’.

I guess you could say vicariously, a large proportion of his fan base is acting out OR* speaking through his mouth. And wanting to make sure he pushes & pushes for them. This is more disturbing to hold that to locate the issue with any single individual, specifically here BJ.

I think the focus on BJ really takes us away from those around us, who are dying for him to remain in power. Those who support bigotry whichever way you look at it. It’s harder to consider the millions of ppl who support indirectly or directly, passively or actively; racism.

So here’s a group analytic thought: maybe the problem here is not BJ. Maybe the disturbance lies not with his bigotry primarily. Perhaps the problems is located elsewhere. Perhaps this is why so many feel gratified by his bigotry. And support him covertly or overtly.

Group analysis is sooooo helpful to understand racism. It’s such a shame it a school of thought few race scholars embrace.

I’m into my 3rd year of studying it. Still a trainee (takes 6 years to qualify in group analysis) and it has fundamentally shifted how I see/formulate things. One core concept I feel every poc & every MH prof should understand, location of disturbance.

And it’s the idea that a disturbance (e.g problem/pathology/impasse) may become manifest in a single point/entity but can never fundamentally be attributable to it, that it always belongs to the group and specifically arise from communication ‘breakdowns.

It’s oversimplified here but* if* you want reading on this, I can send you references. Location of disturbance fundamentally shifts what we consider to be the ‘problem’ & individualistic & separatist orthodoxies.

In far reaching ways for example, imagine if we considered ppl with so called mental heath problems as sites/manifestations for pathology located elsewhere, outside of them AND that collectively we all own that pathology, it ‘belongs’ to us all & serves functions for us all.

The concept of location of disturbance is powerful, some find it complicated. I think it is complex because it challenges so much of how we’re socialised to see the world within western epistemically frameworks. I don’t find it challenging, I find it elucidating.

Hope to have made you curious

Some of you have asked me for some reading on location of disturbance. I have looked around for free stuff but there is very little! This is part of the problem group analysis it is so not accessible! In every sense of the word. But here are a few references...

Paper:

Group analytic concepts: The location of disturbance. (2014). Group Analysis, 47(2_suppl), 71-72.

Chapter:

Foulkes, S. H. (1983). The location of a disturbance. (1st ed., pp. 127-131) Routledge.

Another paper (mine )

Kinouani, G. (2019). Difference, whiteness and the group analytic matrix: An integrated formulation. Group Analysis, , 53331641988345. doi:10.1177/0533316419883455

Also discuss location of disturbance. The most helpful stuff comes from unpublished stuff.

Dissertations but I can’t share those w/o permission. It’s a real shame concept as important has actually not been written about that much at all outside of specialist (and inaccessible) manuscripts.