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Privacy is increasingly becoming a significant factor in antitrust litigation, both as justification to defend against alleged anticompetitive conduct and as an element of product quality that can be diminished as a consequence of alleged anticompetitive conduct. 257 This trend will continue in litigation and will in turn affect the legal landscape, along with corporate practice. Given the recent antitrust litigation involving both defendants and plaintiffs raising privacy concerns, this Part examines the consequences of using data privacy as a shield and sword to alleged antitrust misconduct from a regulatory, litigation, and corporate perspective.

The trend of incorporating privacy into antitrust litigation will continue. In the last year, the Biden Administration made three key appointments that could potentially impact the future of antitrust and privacy. 258 First, President Biden nominated Lina Khan, who was confirmed by the Senate to serve as the Chair of the FTC. 259 Khan, a strong proponent of the Hipster Antitrust movement, has published literature discussing the implications of Big Tech companies handling vast amounts of user data. 260In a 2019 Harvard Law Review article discussing the relationship between privacy and antitrust, Khan and her coauthor wrote that "any broad regulatory framework ... that focuses on abusive data practices[] [*580] without attending to issues of market structure is likely to be at best highly incomplete and at worst an impediment to necessary reforms." 261 Thus, Khan's appointment may lead to more robust antitrust enforcement that incorporates data privacy in its review.

In The Ethics of Opting Out: Queer Theory’s Defiant Subjects, which was released in the spring of 2017, I put pressure on these theories on several levels, of which I’ll merely mention one, namely that I think that something essential gets lost in translation when American queer theorists appropriate 20th-century French critiques of the so-called humanist subject. It is true that Lacan, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari were all highly critical of the notion of the sovereign, autonomous, and agentic subject that we have inherited from Western philosophy in part because they, like earlier thinkers such as Adorno and Levinas, saw the connection between this subject and violence; they understood that this subject’s quest for selfmastery was linked to its quest to master the world, and that the results were disastrous, ranging from slavery and colonialism to Nazi Germany. However, I do not think that continental theorists, generally speaking, sought to destroy the subject as such. Instead, they were interested in what subjectivity might look like after the collapse of the arrogant humanist subject. They wanted to destabilize this subject, to undermine its sovereignty, challenge its autonomy, and dilute its agency. Yes, there was much talk about the subversion of the subject, desubjectivation, and even, in the case of Deleuze and Guattari, of pulverizing the subject. But, ultimately, there was also an idealistic reaching for an alternative, for a subjectivity that would be less sure of itself and therefore more capacious, creative, and open to otherness. Undoubtedly, some of this idealism persists in even the most negative of queer theories in the sense that their negativity usually contains utopian longings. However, I think that queer theory’s flagella tion of the sovereign, autonomous, and agentic subject is by now so ritualistic, undertaken in such a habitual manner, that it has become too predictable to be genuinely critical. I of course understand why it is happening. Particularly now that we are watching President Trump and his corporate allies parade on the political stage, it is easy to recognize the figure of the white-straight-masculinist, self-contained, self-satisfied, and self-confident subject that posthumanist theorists have criticized for decades. But I think that a distinction needs to be drawn between the Trumps of the world and the vast majority of the world’s population. In other words, I think that the call to annihilate (q uq) “the subject” misfires when it is indiscriminate, for when it is generalized, it becomes aimed at individuals who have never come anywhere near to approximating the sovereign subject. That is, it seems to me that the last thing that those who have been dispossessed by social inequalities such as homophobia, sexism, racism, poverty, or neocolonialism need is further dispossession; self-annihilation cannot possibly be a goal for those who already feel annihilated by structural violence, who already lead precarious lives. Likewise, I have a hard time imagining that those who have experienced various forms of Halberstamian failure, for instance those who are unemployed or cutting themselves, view these experiences as sexy forms of political rebellion. Halberstam’s queer art of failure is arguably written from the perspective of those who have already succeeded. Likewise, queer theory’s calls for self-annihilation assume that there is a self to annihilate to begin with. Against this backdrop, Darieck Scott’s Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination is an important corrective.

In constructing their arguments, Dolan and Muñoz both turn to philosopher Ernst Bloch's account of the 'anticipatory illumination' of art to theorise 'never finished gestures towards a potentially better future' (Dolan 2005: 8) that might help us to 'combat the force of political pessimism' (Muñoz 2009: 4). Variously translated as 'ontological anticipation' and 'pre-appearance', this concept expresses Bloch's belief 'that it is somehow possible to experience a kind of foreglow of future possibilities' (Geoghegan 2008: 37) in a manner which is both objective and open. Bloch's account of hope, in other words, evades the traps of both wishful thinking and leaden pragmatism to figure a realism which is not constrained by what has come before. In elaborating this idea, Muñoz draws on Agamben's extended exploration of potentiality as something which is 'present but not actually existing in the present tense' having instead the quality of ‘a trace or potential that exists or lingers after a performance' (Muñoz 2009: 99). For Agamben, potentiality 'conserves' itself even after an event is actualised: it is not 'used up' by any given iteration but extends beyond itself, much as thinking does not exhaust thought (see Cooke 2005: 184). Accordingly, reading for potentiality involves 'scouting for a "not here" or "not now" in the performance that suggests a futurity' (Muñoz 2009: 99) – that is, a willingness to look beyond what is most immediately present in favour of that which signals what might be in the future. A difficulty with this account is how Muñoz's emphasis on 'not here' and 'not now' and Dolan's insistence on transience as a condition of performative efficacy may serve to constrain recognition of what might be accomplished – and sustained – in the present, while effacing how potentiality's persistent trace may itself constitute the ongoing existence of different worlds beyond hegemonic order. Such an account lends itself to a worldview in which ruling conditions are given to be so overwhelmingly dominant as to make alternatives in the here and now an impossibility. Whatever we might glimpse as 'extra to the everyday transaction of heteronormative capitalism' (Muñoz 2009: 22) cannot be grasped in the everyday without falling into the trap of complacency, reinforcing hegemonic terms for being or investing in neoliberalism's promise of a 'better future' as grounds for privation and sacrifice in the present. This tendency is more sharply articulated in Lee Edelman's No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004) where the susceptibility of queerness to normalisation through the logic of reproductive futurity becomes an inevitability and in which, as Michael Snediker observes, the ubiquity of 'always' and ‘every' in Edelman's argument would seem to make the world 'so irrevocably one thing that response to the world would amount to one thing' (Snediker 2009: 24). Are futurity and the possibilities of the here and now unthinkable except on these narrow terms? Might the potentiality of performance - and the 'certain surplus' that is for Muñoz peculiar to queer performance - indicate something other than or, crucially, as well as a vanishing over the horizon? In response, my readings of performance in this final chapter are informed by what Lloyd Pratt identifies in his analysis of novelist Eudora Welty as a 'condition of radical present-tenseness that subordinates to the future and the past, and which favors a committed attention to what is most clearly now' (2011: 200). Grounded in a close reading of the instant as it unfolds, such a stance is ‘neither unduly grim and retrospective nor jolly and hopeful without cause' but instead involves ‘a form of immanent particularity, which opens onto nothing other than the truth of the present' (Pratt 2011: 200). Beginning with Deborah Pearson's The Future Show, Ivana Müller's 60 Minutes of Opportunism and Duncan Macmillan's Every Brilliant Thing – each of which address the uncertain relationship between past, present and future - I consider how performance might elaborate an understanding of optimism's potentiality as a state of being and not-being, and doing and not-doing. While each work narrates an attachment to the possibility of a future, they also describe how the labour of making oneself present to and for others through performance involves a paradoxical vanishing act wherein optimism registers as an equivocal if not deeply ambivalent attachment to futurity. Structured by attempts to imagine the future in its relation to a persistent present, each of these works elaborates how the figure of the optimist might embody a critique of the conditions in which we find ourselves without reserving the possibility of alternatives to another where and another when. Such a critique does not privilege hope over hopelessness but draws attention to how the potential of what Robyn Wiegman describes as 'small worlds of sustenance that cultivate a different present and future' (2014: 11) involves the attempt to be present in the present, for the present. In the second part of the chapter I explore three further performances - FK Alexander's (I Could Go On Singing) Over The Rainbow, Rosana Cade's Walking:Holding and Nando Messias' The Sissy's Progress - as works which elaborate how the optimist's insistence on the here and now does not model heroic resilience but instead invokes vulnerability as the means by which an ethics of interpersonal relations might be forged apart from neoliberalism's preference for responsible future-oriented and ultimately paranoid prediction. Such an ethics centred on our constitutive exposure to one another – is not straightforwardly affirmative, and invites recognition of the contingent qualities of any claim on the future as a remedy to deleterious uncertainty, or social injustice. Characterised by an attentiveness to the possibilities and consequences of life lived beyond its most normative parameters, it articulates a politics which understands that the world as we know it can be different because other worlds already exist.

Alexander and Rhodes, Kopelson, and Waite’s observations about composition can be similarly attached to her big sister, rhetoric. That is, much like queer composition exists in an impossible relation to crystalized pedagogical norms, the rhetorical work of queers queering queerly similarly limits its attachments through resisting, by default, the often unnamed and dematerialized “normative.” And while I certainly do not discount the importance of resisting dangerously oppressive institutions and practices, what I find impossible about queer rhetoric is the discursive cage in which it has locked itself. For example, Anthony Slagle demands, “Any queer framework must pose critical questions that help us to understand the role of difference in the construction of messages” (131). In “Queer Rhetoric and the Pleasures of the Archive,” Alexander and Rhodes suggest, “Queer rhetoric names a constellation of discursive practices that emerge at different times for different groups in order to articulate resistance to regimes of sexualized normalization.” More recently, William P. Banks, Matthew B. Cox, and Caroline Dadas offer this definition: Queer rhetorics begin with the assumption that critique—the calling out of language as language—represents an initial and important destabilization of meaning, not to prevent meaning or to pretend that meaning cannot be made but to ask why this meaning at this time and under these circumstances: these are fundamentally rhetorical questions. (11) What do we do after we pose our “critical questions?” Who is responsible for identifying the “regimes of sexual normalization?” How do bodies survive beyond the hearing and feeling and experiencing of not violent languaging but the destabilization of reality which follows? Is there a there there beyond the resistance of the there that is said to be there? Much like queer theory—the formalized, interdisciplinary academic pursuit—queer rhetorics have bonded themselves so stringently to antinormative resistance vis-à-vis the discursive impulse that their actionability is dulled to inaction. And we know this. Across their oeuvre, Alexander and Rhodes acknowledge that scholarship in queer rhetoric, composition, literacy, etc. “remains relatively sparse and under-read” (“Impossible” 178; “Queer Rhetoric”). Looking at the discursive limitations in both academic and activist rhetorics, Erin Rand confirms the danger of fetishizing resistance and antinormativity: “Clutching resistance too tightly, we are in jeopardy of foreclosing the queerness that inhabits agency as its founding condition” (169). Nevertheless, such foreclosures are apparent through the still marginalized rhetorical scholarship that approaches queer. There is, of course, a further complication. Queer theory struggled, for the past two decades, between the antisocial/antirelational thesis and relational queer utopianism. The back and forth between scholars such as Lee Edelman, the posterchild of antisocial queer theory, and José Esteban Muñoz, queer of color ancestor, is so legendary and well-documented that a rehearsal of their debates seems superfluous. But, for those keeping score, Muñoz and the relational queer utopians won that war. The complication for queer rhetorics, however, is that so much of the work we do as queer rhetoricians is still dominated by the discursive tenets of the antisocial thesis that our invocation of Muñoz, other queer and feminist of color theorists, or any scholar challenging pessimistic critique becomes dematerialized. An issue, therefore, arises not because rhetoricians ignore relational queer utopianism—since Cruising Utopia’s 2009 publication, for example, queer rhetorics scholarship very rarely does not invoke Muñoz’s encouragement to think of queerness as horizon … not yet here— but that we leave the work of the then and there for another time and for someone else (often communities of color) … not yet here. Scholars like Karma R. Chávez and Eujung Kim, among others, warn us that aiming critique solely toward our pasts and action solely toward our futures collapses the much-needed material work of the present. Even so, many of us in queer rhetorics and queer studies, writ large, (yes, I’m including myself in this collective) continuously fall into paranoid readings that allow loud proclamations against, against, against normative structures without trying to (or perhaps knowing how to) turn our words into action. We, by nature of our pessimistic orientations, drown in critique. Thus, queer is an impossible subject for rhetoric precisely because of the ways we currently dematerialize and discursively limit both “queer” and “rhetoric” through pessimistic/paranoid scholarship. From this charge, let me suggest three supporting claims and, more importantly, corresponding questions for further inquiry. First, “queer” and “rhetoric,” in their historic and current formations, demonstrate different desires and are desired differently. Queer, as mentioned above and explained further below, is so tied up in discourses of antinormativity that nearly every political project can be deemed insignificantly queer if strategic essentialism or non-apparent disidentifications are engaged for communal advancement. Rhetoric, as the art of persuasion, is always about the work of normalization. Even radically progressive rhetorics rely on the power of normalization as a goal of persuasion insofar as any persuasive intention is the intention to make practices acceptable and common among communities. What might happen if we refuse, in the tradition of radical Black feminism, the binary of normative/antinormative (read: rhetoric/queer)? Second, “queer” and “rhetoric” are both de-materialized by discursive traditions of critique/criticism and a “hermeneutics of suspicion.” Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick famously outlines the paranoid tendencies of queer reading, and her observations can (should!) be mapped onto contemporary rhetorical criticism. Sedgwick—and those who continue her project suggest that the revelation of violent knowledges does not necessarily demand action on the part of the person to whom violence is revealed: “What is the basis for assuming that it will surprise or disturb, never mind motivate, anyone to learn that a given social manifestation is artificial, self-contradictory, imitative, phantasmatic, or even violent?” (141). Even when attempting to engage in the generative work of affect and relational queer utopianism, we too often find ourselves raging against the normative. In expending our energies on being against, against, against, queer rhetoricians are left with tepid gestures toward complex radical potentialities. What becomes possible if we reconsider material-discursive structures when attending to the rhetorical affects of queer? Third, queer (and most definitely its uptake in rhetoric/composition/literacy/etc.) remains enamored of the addressing/redressing/exploding the subject–object divide of Western liberalism. Tragically, this is another example of the us falling into either/or/and the most obvious trap, the second most obvious trap, or the third most obvious trap. Either we, like good poststructuralists, aim to identify and destroy the autonomous, liberal subject, or we ignore the subject to fetishize the proper objects of critique, or we completely overcorrect to the point of preserving the queer subject and their objects as articulated through neoliberal identity politics, neocolonial sovereignties, and state-granted rights. Sometimes we attempt all three. Is it possible to create a subjectless/objectless critique without engaging the predictable “bad habits” of critical theory?

There are varied articulations of what I am referring to as queer pessimism, but perhaps the best known of these is Lee Edelman’s queer negativity, as formulated in his 2004 book, No Future. 2 I will narrow my discussion of queer pessimisms to Edelman’s work because it best demonstrates the conceptual move that I will critique (and offer an alternative to) in this article: Edelman frames hope and refusal as mutually exclusive options that negate one another’s potency. Political hope, in his view, is always complicit with reproductive futurity and its violence. Refusal, on the other hand, is the hallmark of queer negativity, which is rendered the unintelligible outside of political discourse and imagination. In the following section, I will briefly lay out his argument and take up existing critiques among queer and feminist theorists who argue that, first, Edelman’s work presumes a white, male queer subject and, second, it is not useful or relevant for women, nonbinary people, and trans people of color. I build upon these critiques by arguing that these limitations are linked to Edelman’s perpetuation of a misleading binary between hope and refusal, which forecloses the radical possibilities for queer feminist theory and practice 2 The title of this section borrows a phrase from page 5 of Edelman’s No Future (2004). that their co-constitution opens up—possibilities that I explore in my engagement with Hartman’s work. Edelman argues that every intelligibly political movement today is structured by the teleological valuation of the future (and especially future generations) as the foundation and aim of politics—epitomized by the figure of “the Child.” The Child does not refer to literal children but is rather a symbol of possibility, futurity, and innocence that affirms and authenticates a given social order. This merely symbolic status and function of the Child in political discourse is evidenced by the fact that actual children are so often sacrificed in the name of the Child (Edelman 2022b, 100). As I write in November 2023, we are bearing witness to this sacrificial logic, as the Israeli state (with support from the US government) slaughters Palestinian children in the name of the future of Israel and its children—justifications that have been augmented with falsified claims (corroborated and then disavowed by US President Joe Biden) about Hamas beheading Israeli infants (Al Jazeera 2023).3 As Edelman points out, the centrality of the figure of the Child is not limited to fascist or conservative politics but also structures so-called progressive politics of the Left. Highlighting the stubborn persistence of this figure, Edelman points out the irony of pro-abortion campaigns that mirror their anti-abortion opponents by advocating on behalf of “our children—for our daughters and our sons” (2004, 3). This example, a rare moment in No Future where reproductive futurism encounters the discourse of reproductive rights, is used as evidence for Eelman’s argument that no matter the specific content of one’s politics, the logic of reproductive futurism persists. This leads to the opening insight of No Future: our contemporary political imagination is constituted such that it is impossible to take up a position that negates the centrality of the Child without being rendered unintelligible as political at all.4 To refuse the logic of reproductive futurism, to refuse to be on the side fighting for the children, is to occupy a position radically outside the politically imaginable and intelligible—and it is this space, which politics renders unthinkable, that Edelman proposes queerness occupies (3). For him, queerness names the antisocial opposition to the mandate of reproductive futurism—it is the social order’s death drive (3). K of Edelman Though Muñoz’s critique focuses primarily on whiteness, it is important to note that Edelman’s queer subject is also implicitly male. Despite a potentially fruitful alliance between queer and feminist refusals of reproductive futurism and its weaponization of the figure of the Child as a means of social control (especially for those with the capacity for pregnancy and birth), the possibility of co-conspiring in No Future falls short. Edelman’s account of reproductive futurity is decidedly monolithic; focused on the abstract and structural level of analysis, he does not carefully parse the disparate forms it takes and the ways it is deployed when it comes to those deemed, by normative default, “would-be” fathers or mothers. Instead, he speaks broadly of “parents,” and in his discussion of parental love, they are always presumed to be heterosexual (53, 59). The conspicuous absence of race, sex, and gender is intentional, as indicated in an endnote that expresses Edelman’s “refusal” to engage in what he dismisses as “identity politics” and his insistence that, despite the fact that most of his examples in No Future are men, his figuration of the queer “has no privileged relation to any sex or sexuality” (2004, 165). My training in feminist philosophy has made me deeply suspicious of any claim to conceptual neutrality; it is far too often in my discipline that abstract universality quietly smuggles in particularity (read: masculine subjectivity). But perhaps most telling and relevant to the context of this article is that Edelman suggests that while it’s possible that there could be a female sinthomosexual, the female characters from the film and literary sources he engages “are determined by socially legible desires—typically in the form of obsessive ‘love’—rather than by the refusal of sociality and desire,” so they are less useful for his argument (165). In the same breath that he declares further consideration of gendered differences “valuable” (for someone else to consider), he dismisses the relevance of sex and gender for an analysis of reproductive futurism and, at the same time, uncritically circulates a stereotypical binary wherein women are associated with love (and reproduction) rather than refusal (and negation), which for Edelman is epitomized by the male queer (165). While Edelman dismisses considerations of race, sex, and gender as irrelevant or even counter to his project, any robust and actionable account of reproductive futurism needs to do the work of carefully attending to lived experience. Reproductive futurism is not homogenous in its application or its effects; understanding how to refuse it requires attending to its complexity with care. As Penelope Deutscher has pointed out, what Edelman presents as reproductive futurism’s overvaluation of parenthood is an overgeneralization; racialized women (often fetishized as “figures of surplus pregnancy, of welfare benefit abuse or other kinds of irresponsibility”) are routinely devalued as parents/mothers (Deutscher 2017, 50). The long and ongoing history of forced sterilization of Black, Indigenous, and Latina women in the United States plainly evidences this. While this may not be in conflict with the heart of Edelman’s analysis, his account lacks important nuance—nuance that can be (and has been) offered by decolonial feminist scholarship.5 In failing to attend to the complexities of reproductive futurism as it is experienced by flesh-and-blood people rather than merely fictive and fetishized characters, he forecloses careful thinking about the forms of refusal most able to counter its logic and effects.

Rather, the constraints imposed by patent performativity must form the basis for their own reform. Here we turn back to Judith Butler, who shows how the constraints of performative social norms may be turned to resist those same norms. In the context of performative gender, Butler famously offers the example of the [transgender]transvestite, who performs gender transgressively.214 “Drag” performances, according to Butler, appropriate the norms of gender, playing them against themselves to rework the possibilities of gender.215 Such observations point the way to parallel reworking of the social tropes associated with patenting and innovation. Transgressive re-orientation of patent isolation, elitism, hierarchy, dominance, extraction, and exclusivity might similarly expose the performance of inventorship to re-interpretation and open new possibilities for enacting innovation. To be sure, Butler cautions that, at least in the case of gender, enactment remains compelled, constrained, and effectively mandatory.216 Gender is a characteristic on which societies force individuals to take some stance. Even those who adopt non-binary or gender fluid performances must do so with reference to the concept of gender, and to the dominance of masculine or feminine norms. Society is perhaps less exercised with regard to inventorship than it is with regard to gender–one need not necessarily engage with innovation, although it should be noted that the failure to do so in effect takes a stand regarding innovation, by making a choice not to be defined as an inventor. But once the individual actively engages with the role of inventor, the reference points are constrained and largely fixed. The inventor must, for example, by definition be a person of extraordinary skill in the art, because if the invention could be developed by one of ordinary skill, it is by definition unpatentable. The choice to be an ordinary inventor is not currently accommodated within patent enactment. Thus, we cannot expect that the defining tropes of patent enactment can be avoided, but Butler’s analysis suggests that they can be subverted. Performative constraints may be repurposed to mark out a space for greater diversity. We see indications in recent scholarship of how patents might be “queered” in this fashion. Some commentators have begun to question the assumption that the promotion of technical progress is always beneficial.217 Others have challenged the notion of “progress” itself, asking whether innovation may be defined differently than the extractive purposes of current patent policy.218 In the copyright context, Severine Dusollier has similarly argued that intellectual property should be re-imagined as a set of inclusive, rather than exclusive rights.219 Geertrui van Overwalle has explicitly attempted to operationalize such inclusive rights for the patent system, outlining a system for inclusive, rather than exclusive patents.220 Such glimmers of resistance to the existing enactment of patents indicate the potential for defining more inclusive performances of inventorship and innovation.

This is not to suggest that queer creators, or that queer creativity, are necessarily oppositional to market forces. Rather, some queer creators work within the logic of the market to subvert or transform it in more nuanced ways. For example, RuPaul—an internationally famous drag queen—based their career on emulating and eventually stepping in for cisgender female models.138 RuPaul’s Drag Race, a successful reality television show hosted by RuPaul in which contestants compete to become “America’s Next Drag Superstar,” started out as a spinoff of Tyra Banks’s “America’s Next Top Model”139 but has now, arguably, matched or exceeded its global cultural influence. RuPaul’s Drag Race launched the successful careers of dozens of queer creators.140 The show can be seen as an example of strategic commodification and supplantation—creating a commercially successful product and bringing greater visibility to queer voices through the machinery of the market, while arguably shifting the politics around it.141

In a similar vein, it should also be noted that queer resistance to IP does not equate to a categorical rejection of proprietary entitlements in creative works, IP law, or resistance to artists who benefit from (and often rigorously pursue) IP rights. The picture, as is often the case, is nuanced. Indeed, some queer creators exercise their IP rights; many in the queer community admire or worship artists who pursue their IP rights (and even actively support them), and, as this Article itself demonstrates, many queer communities and creative spaces maintain clear proprietary norms around intellectual creations.

In summary, his application of social death is used as a reason why Black life cannot be oriented at any level of meaningful production within society. While Wilderson is correct that the material labor and symbolic currency born out of Blackness will always be consumed by whiteness, his conclusion is paradoxical at some level. If humanism is the grammar by which civil society determines the register of subjectivity, why then is that matrix appropriate in determining the state of Black life, if Black life is inherently the position of what is incommunicable? If social death theory’s application is one that concludes an impossibility of meaningful Black productivity, then Afro-Pessimism becomes nothing but a body of literature that echoes the same sentiments as those who would understand Black life as a state of nothingness in plain racist terms. Understanding Black ontology should definitely involve an understanding of the social deadness of the Black subject in relation to society, but it should not be used as the standard to measure internal liberation. The distinction here is important because too often Afro-Pessimists scholars like Wilderson conceptualize Black resistance as a singular orientation toward society. Indeed their work is important to understand the manner in which society operates upon Black subjects, but it is insufficient to describe an ethic that allows for the pursuit of meaning within Blackness itself. In this regard, scholars should understand Black resistance as occurring on two different levels: the ontological and the intra-ontological. The distinction being made is between the ontological state of Blackness as determined outside of humanity proper versus the life within the ontological state of Blackness as understood through social death. If social death is the state of the Black, what then speaks to the state of the Black amongst Blacks? It would be a mistake on the part of any scholar to concern themselves with one and not the other. This paper uses the term intra-ontology in reference to the varying ontologies within social death. This is the Black among Blacks. These are those spaces within Blackness that only the Black can ever understand or occupy. Though they exist outside of the production of the human (within the category of social death), there are Black affektual politics that have been with the slave since the ship. These are the emotional and spiritual ontologies within Blackness that connected slaves of different lands, languages, and religions into one community. Black intra-ontology can never achieve the plane of recognition because it can only be understood within Blackness, which by definition is the position of social death, but those affektual spirits and emotions ought not be neglected. Social death should guide Black resistance strategy in understanding the position of the Black within civil society, but it speaks not to the arrangement of Black intra-ontological questions. If this is measured by social death it only produces a cycle of endless internal psychic violence because the Black would only be met with the discovery of a violent reality of its existence through affirmations of social death. Intra-ontological resistance must not be a question of how the world understands Blackness, because the position of the slave is one that cannot be articulated in terms of hegemony. If it is so that the Black inherently experiences the world through a different ontological register, then measures of Black liberation cannot be articulated through the lens of humanist grammars. Jared Sexton, the Director of the African-American Studies School of Humanities at the University of California-Irvine, is another leading scholar in Afro-pessimism. He explains that there is indeed social life that exists within social death. There are many that condemn the invocation of social death as overly pessimistic, but “this acceptance or affirmation is active; it is a willing or willingness, in other words, to pay whatever social costs accrue to being black, to inhabiting blackness, to living a black social life under the shadow of social death. This is not an accommodation to the dictates of the antiblack world” (Sexton 2010). This is to say that it is indeed possible to both affirm the state of social death and actively pursue the social life that exists within Blackness. This is not the typical critique of social death, but rather it is a necessary specification of the social life within social death that Sexton speaks. Social death is adequate in terms of measuring the ontological state of the human versus the Black, but a different rubric is required in mapping social life within social death. One such rubric is fleshly politics. This concepts derives from the plantation in regards to the manner in which slaves would temporarily reclaim and weaponize their bodies as a site of political protest against their state of enslavement. Fleshy politics is an example of an appropriate rubric for measuring liberation within intra-ontological politics because these bodily resistances surely did not change the physical state of enslavement, but it did immeasurable good for the mental and psychological state of those in the master’s cage. Alternate orientations to the flesh “excavates the social (after)life of these categories: it represents racializing assemblages of subjection that can never annihilate the lines of flight, freedom dreams, practices of liberation, and possibilities of other worlds” (Weheliye 2014). In contrast to Wilderson’s line of flight away from bodily coding, it is important to reclaim the atrocity of the flesh as a means of agency within capture through the remapping of whiteness. The enslaved female flesh was the site of great violence, but there is a false “dichotomy between the material/political and the personal, in large measure [because even though the] body, so deeply personal, is also a political arena. Their work has demonstrated the extent to which women's bodies were unique sites of domination under slavery” (Camp 2002). Though the body was in the possession of the slave master, the enslaved found personal meaning in its temporary recapture in fleshliness which satisfied an innate desire for selfhood. The illegality of using the flesh as a site of pleasure became a political counter-investment. While conventional Afro-Pessimist would argue that this personal orientation does nothing in terms of the ontological position within Blackness, the personal victory the enslaved experiences as a result of that temporary reclamation is meaningful in both psychological and emotional terms. This is important because if there is never room for personal liberation, and Black resistance is only understood in terms of material questions within civil society, it reproduces the same sacrificial logic that social death explains. Resistance strategies that only take meaning in notions of full agency are recipes for failure because these only measure Black liberation on the register of civil society which can never grapple with the inherent confine in which Black life exists.

In part, Prince’s about face on music was related to industry-wide struggles over¶ copyright infringement, specifically music piracy. Prince redoubled his efforts to combat¶ piracy, including copyright infringement of his music and images, sometimes alienating¶ his fans with his zealousness. Yet in pushing for strong copyright protection, Prince¶ took aim at hundreds of years of theft and “racial plagiarism” (Pham, 2017) of Black¶ art, including music from Blues to jazz, and the underlying commitment to treating¶ Black people as property, not humans. Take, for instance, a statement that he made several years ago in an interview with the Guardian: “We made money [online] before piracy was real crazy. Nobody’s making money now except phone companies, Apple and¶ Google. I’m supposed to go to the White House to talk about copyright protection. It’s¶ like the gold rush out there. Or a carjacking. There’s no boundaries” (Lynskey, 2011).¶ Through his anti-piratical stance, Prince made clear that Black musicians, like their¶ White counterparts, deserve full property rights for their creative works. Prince’s call¶ for property ownership in the Rally 4 Peace was emblematic of his embrace of Black¶ capitalism as is his lyric in “Dear Mr. Man,” “Your thousand years are up; now you got¶ to share the land.” Prince crafted a narrative of Black entrepreneurship and Black communitarianism that celebrates the work of Black creators and values Black lives. In¶ Prince’s narrative, Black people are equal citizens who have a right to access the¶ American Dream, which James Baldwin argues in his famous speech “The American¶ Dream and the American Negro,” was never granted to them (Baldwin, 1965). Unlike¶ in the world of racial capitalism that Cedric Robinson pointedly noted has existed since¶ the beginning of colonialism, Prince’s Black capitalism imagines new and powerful labor¶ and commodity relations. Although Black capitalism, as Prince imagines it, is not radically invested in undoing the inequities produced by capitalism or intellectual property¶ law, it is invested in undoing the racist logics that make dispossession and disenfranchisement thinkable political and social options. Prince’s imaginings of commodity relations have formed the foundations for a popular cultural narrative of Black capitalism in which Black art merits respect and protection. For instance, Fox’s hit television show, Empire, takes up Prince’s piracy narrative¶ with surprising realism. In the first episode of the show, rap and R & B magnate¶ Lucious Lyon explains in a prelude to announcing that his company is going public, in¶ words almost identical to those that Prince used just a few years earlier before testifying¶ about copyright policy before Congress:¶ I started selling drugs when I was nine years old in Philadelphia. I did it to feed myself.¶ But it was the music that played in my head that kept me alive when I thought I was¶ gonna get shot … Times have changed, though. The Internet has destroyed the musician’s¶ ability to make money because our work is downloaded for free online. And now it’s¶ impossible for the disenfranchised kids growing up in the projects to overcome poverty the¶ way that I did. We are gonna change all of that. (Empire, 2015)¶ In Lucious’ fictional world, Empire Entertainment posits itself as the protector of the¶ Black urban poor, providing a way out of the confines of the structural oppression of¶ race and class. Lucious, in selling Empire Entertainment, asserts that Black musicians,¶ particularly during the rise of rap and hip hop, used music as a tool of racial uplift. The¶ realities of intellectual property ownership are more complicated than Empire would¶ have us believe. After all, for an artist to own their catalog is likely a necessary, though¶ not sufficient, means of undoing the structural inequalities that fuel systematic oppression. Nonetheless, the music mogul’s own success is represented in the show as a means¶ of empowering Black youth. In a scene later in the season, at Cousin Bunky’s funeral,¶ Lucious gives a child an advance on his first record, symbolically showing how he parlays¶ his success into support for the Black community. The micronarrative of copyright law¶ and creatorship that show creator Lee Daniels tells through Lucious is part of a notably¶ intersectional, though still quite imperfect, story of Black creatorship and Black entrepreneurism that the show weaves. In later seasons of the show, Cookie, not Lucious,¶ becomes the hustler extraordinaire that keeps the company and the family together. She¶ is coded as a Black woman with the intellectual prowess, street smarts, and esthetic¶ instincts to keep Empire Entertainment afloat. Yet there are no illusions that she does so¶ through government subsidies or small business loans. Cookie’s founding donation to¶ Empire Entertainment is drug money for which she pays—and ultimately profits.¶ Netflix’s series, The Get Down, reflects a similar narrative. Though crime is represented as endemic to the Bronx in the late 1970s, music, both disco and hip hop, offer¶ a way out of the deteriorating neighborhood in New York. In one of the show’s central¶ plots in the first season, DJ-in-training Shaolin Fantastic and his crew must demonstrate¶ their loyalty after getting caught with a Grandmaster Flash bootleg tape. Though the¶ show’s creator, Baz Luhrmann, had a history of collaboration with Prince, including on¶ Romeo þ Juliet and The Great Gatsby (Tribeca, 2016), The Get Down does not explicitly¶ echo Prince’s language in the same way as Empire. It nonetheless partakes in mythmaking around the American Dream and Black entrepreneurialism that echoes Prince’s thematic foci. Grandmaster Flash seeks only to protect his intellectual property, which as¶ we know from historical hindsight, gives rise to an entire new genre of music. The first¶ season sets protagonist Ezekiel on the road to success, confirmed in the shows frequent¶ flash forward moments. By preventing the circulation of bootleg tapes, Grandmaster¶ Flash ensures the value of the good he is selling. If it is only possible to consume his¶ music at his parties, he must profit. Many years later, Prince used the digital version of¶ Grandmaster Flash’s theory of preventing bootlegging to posthumously secure a record¶ breaking five spots in the Billboard Top 10. As such, The Get Down becomes part of a¶ larger metanarrative of Black creatorship. In a post-Prince world with post-Prince popular culture, there is public space in which to engage that question. Moreover, there is¶ greater ideological space than ever before for Black artists to think not only about¶ claiming their creative autonomy, just as Prince did over the course of his career, but¶ also controlling their (intellectual) property and personas, as creators, citizens, and¶ whole persons who are entitled to full property rights.

For academic readers, our commentary argues for loosening the intellectual grip of ‘innovation studies’, for backing off from the nested, hierarchical multi-level model as the only model in town, and for exploring other social scientific, but also systemic theories of change. The more we think about the politics and practicalities of reflexive transition management, the more complex the process appears: for a policy audience, our words of caution could be read as an invitation to abandon the whole endeavour. If agency, predictability and legitimacy are as limited as we’ve suggested, this might be the only sensible conclusion.However, we are with Rip (2006) in recognising the value, productivity and everyday necessity of an ‘illusion of agency’, and of the working expectation that a difference can be made even in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. The outcomes of actions are unknowable, the system unsteerable and the effects of deliberate intervention inherently unpredictable and, ironically, it is this that sustains concepts of agency and management. As Rip argues ‘illusions are productive because they motivate action and repair work, and thus something (whatever) is achieved’ (Rip 2006: 94). Situated inside the systems they seek to influence, governance actors – and actors of other kinds as well - are part of the dynamics of change: even if they cannot steer from the outside they are necessary to processes within. This is, of course, also true of academic life. Here we are, busy critiquing and analysing transition management in the expectation that somebody somewhere is listening and maybe even taking notice. If we removed that illusion would we bother writing anything at all? Maybe we need such fictions to keep us going, and maybe – fiction or no - somewhere along the line something really does happen, but not in ways that we can anticipate or know.

ABSTRACT: Introduction: In the past, psychoanalysis was classified as a pseudoscience. Karl Popper was one of those who objected to the idea that psychoanalysis is a science, using falsifiability. However, falsifiability cannot be considered sufficient anymore, since it carries major weaknesses and better alternatives to address the issue are available. Objective: This article intends to evaluate the scientific status of psychoanalysis concerning the demarcation problem. Method: In order to do so, Sven Ove Hansson’s criteria was used: It consists of a set of sufficient and necessary conditions which is complemented by a multicriteria list that helps identifying pseudosciences. It was analyzed how much psychoanalysis fits each of Hansson's seven items, besides proposing the addition of an eighth. Results: The results showed that psychoanalysis was compatible with all eight demarcation of pseudoscience’s items. Conclusion: In the end, the conclusion was that even if falsifiability was to be dismissed, the evidence suggests that there are still enough reasons to affirm that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience, since it significantly deviates from scientific quality standards. Keywords: Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Science Artigo de Revisão Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 2 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 RESUMO: Introdução: A psicanálise já foi classificada como pseudociência no passado. Karl Popper foi um daqueles que traçou objeções à doutrina psicanalítica, usando do critério da falseabilidade. Entretanto, a falseabilidade não pode mais ser considerada suficiente para resolver o problema, já que implica em dificuldades consideráveis, e melhores alternativas para abordar a questão estão disponíveis. Objetivo: Este artigo tem por objetivo avaliar o status científico da psicanálise em relação ao problema da demarcação. Método: Para fazer isso, o critério de Sven Ove Hansson foi utilizado: este consiste em um conjunto de condições suficientes e necessárias, que é complementado com uma lista de multicritérios que auxiliam a identificar pseudociências. Foi analisado o quanto a psicanálise se encaixava em cada um dos sete itens da lista de Hansson, além de ser proposta a adição de um oitavo item. Resultados: Os resultados mostraram que a psicanálise era compatível com todos os oito itens da lista de demarcação de pseudociências. Conclusão: Ao final, a conclusão foi de que mesmo que a falseabilidade deva ser descartada, as evidências sugerem que ainda temos motivos suficientes para afirmar que a psicanálise é uma pseudociência, já que ela se distancia significativamente dos padrões de qualidade científicos. Palavras-chave: Psicanálise, Psicologia, Ciência RESUMEN: Introducción: En el pasado, el psicoanálisis fue clasificado como una pseudociencia. Karl Popper fue uno de los que objetó la doctrina psicoanalítica usando el criterio de la falsabilidad. Sin embargo, ya no se puede considerar la falsabilidad como suficiente para resolver el problema, ya que implicaría dificultades considerables y existen mejores alternativas para abordar este asunto. Objetivo: Este artículo pretende evaluar el estatus científico del psicoanálisis con respecto al problema de demarcación. Método: Para ello fue utilizada la propuesta de Sven Ove Hansson: ésta consiste en un conjunto de condiciones suficientes y necesarias, complementado con una lista multicriterios que ayuda a identificar pseudociencias. Se analizó que tanto el psicoanálisis se encaja en cada uno de los siete ítems de la lista de Hansson y además, se propone Ferreira CMC 3 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 la adición de un octavo. Resultados: Los resultados mostraron que el psicoanálisis es compatible con todos los criterios de demarcación de pseudociencia. Conclusión: Al final, se concluyó que aún teniendo que descartar la falsabilidad, las evidencias sugieren que hay motivos suficientes para afirmar que el psicoanálisis es una pseudociencia, ya que ésta se desvía significativamente de los estándares de calidad científica. Palabras clave: Psicoanálisis, Psicología, Ciencia How to cite: Ferreira CMC - Is psychoanalysis a pseudoscience? Reevaluating the doctrine using a multicriteria list. Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33. https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest: none Funding: none Approval Research Ethics Committee (REC): not applicable Received on: Feb 8, 2021 Accepted on: Apr 30, 2021 Published on: Sept 13, 2021 Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 4 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 Introduction Laplanche and Pontalis [1] present the definition of psychoanalysis as follows: founded by Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis is a psychotherapeutic treatment and an investigation method (upon which psychotherapy rests) that has as its object of study the unconscious meaning of human productions (words, actions, thoughts, dreams, and others). Besides that, psychoanalysis is a conglomerate of psychological and psychopathological theories, which has its basis on the experiences that come from the psychotherapy and the investigative method. One of the most famous authors who objected to the doctrine, more specifically by questioning its scientific status, was the philosopher of science Karl Popper. About psychoanalysis, Popper [2] argued that regardless of any occurrence that is related to human behavior, the Freudian psychoanalysis adepts could interpret it in the light of their own theory. Even though intuitively, a theory compatible with all kinds of predictions and scenarios could sound attractive, that would not be a quality for the author; only a theoretical weakness. In his view, a theory that applies to the world regardless of the scenario in question does not say anything relevant about it, because even if reality were utterly different from how it is today, it would still sound as accurate as if it were not. To judge a theory that behaves like that, Popper [2] used falsifiability, that works as a demarcation criterion for what is scientific and what is not. Falsifiability determines that, for a theory to be scientific, there must be a possibility that it could be wrong and eventually be refuted by new evidence. It is not enough that a theory can explain the world; means to check if its explanations are appropriate must exist, and that would only be achievable if there were a possibility for the theory to be wrong in at least one scenario. For the author, psychoanalysis would be applicable in every conceivable circumstance, and there would not be a possibility to check if its explanations were really adequate [2 p. 64-65]. So, falsifiability is proposed to demarcate science, and psychoanalysis would not fit in the category. Popper's comments did not go unnoticed, and he was criticized for the way he characterized psychoanalysis. About this debate, Grünbaum [3] used Ferreira CMC 5 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 the paranoia example to defend that the theory would be falsifiable. Grünbaum argued that, for the Freudian theory, every paranoid had repressed sexual desires towards other individuals of the same sex; so, if hypothetically a paranoid that did not repress his desires were found, the theory would have been falsified, that is, a situation which it could not explain existed. About that, Cioffi [4] counterargued that, even if that was the case, this topic is peripheral for psychoanalytic theory, and by using it as the final argument, it is easy to forget more critical candidates to face the Popperian criterion, for example, the sexual etiology of neurosis. The paranoia case is insufficient for taking down Popper's criticism, for not being part of the major suppositions of the doctrine. Besides his psychoanalysis criticisms, Popper's science view in general was also objected to. This article has no intention to reach an exhaustion of possible counterarguments. However, considering some examples given by Newton-Smith [5 p. 44-76]: Popper rejected that inductive reasoning (non-deductive predictions or generalizations whose validity does not depend on their logical form) should be used in science, defending that it should operate with deductive reasoning only (of which the validity or invalidity depend exclusively on its logical form), and therefore, confirming a theory would be impossible. It is only possible to know that, if the theory is falsified, then it is false. However, even if a theory is falsified, if there is no better option to explain certain phenomena that could replace it, and considering that the first possesses reasonable assertions, it would probably not be wise to discard it just because it was falsified. Despite that, his conception of science inadvertently requires induction to justify itself, what shows a failure in his proposal. These and other difficulties in the adoption of falsifiability as a demarcation criterion turn it insufficient, and this creates a demand for a different one. Methods Sven Ove Hansson is a philosopher who had an important impact on the debate of the demarcation problem, by creating an alternative proposal: a criterion with two conditions that are jointly sufficient and necessary for a doctrine to be pseudoscientific [6], and a multicriteria list that helps identifying pseudosciences, the latter being based on seven items [7]. It Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 6 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 has the advantage of not needing to face the same problems as the previous ones faced, like Popper's falsifiability. Before discussing it, it is beneficial to understand his way of defining science: “Science (in the broad sense) is the practice that provides us with the most reliable (i.e., epistemically most warranted) statements that can be made, at the time being, on subject matter covered by the community of knowledge disciplines (i.e., on nature, ourselves as human beings, our societies, our physical constructions, and our thought constructions)” [7, p. 70]. It is common to consider that science only entails the natural sciences, and that notion excludes linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, history, and other humanities from the category. However, as Hansson [7] shows, this is not an adequate perspective because both science (in the traditional sense) and humanities aim to provide the most reliable statements regarding their object of study. Therefore, they can be understood as the theories that present the most robust evidence regarding what they investigate. Together, they form a community, and the disciplines that are part of it cooperate and depend on each other to fulfill this goal. A recurrent argument is that psychoanalysis is a science, since it is inserted within the academic realm, in research, and in departments of many higher education courses. It would therefore be part of the scientific community. However, "It is not the academic status but the methodology and the type of knowledge that should determine whether a discipline is scientific (in the broad sense)" [7 p. 64]. Even if it is recognized by the academy, this does not make it a science. If homeopaths or creationists, for example, started creating academic courses, published papers about their theories, and organized formal congress meetings to assemble their community, that would not be the factor for turning homeopathy and creationism into sciences; the same is true for other doctrines. Hansson [7] also mentions that even in the field of humanities extremely dubitable theories are also present; for example, the holocaust deniers and the ancient astronaut theorists. To avoid a division between pseudohumanities and pseudosciences and accurately acknowledge the endeavor that aims to provide us with the most reliable statements that can be made in our time, the broad definition of science is suitable. Ferreira CMC 7 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 When a statement is supported by a sufficient amount of evidence, it is epistemically justified. Sufficient evidence is what makes a belief reliable, as it provides good reason to think that the proposed hypothesis is probably true. The fact that science is the practice that provides the most reliable statements means that it is the one that presents the best and most robust evidence regarding its objects of study. Controls and adjustments are constantly being made to get closer and closer to an adequate description of reality. For example, when someone wants to conduct an empirical investigation about whether or not some new treatment works, a randomized doubleblind placebo-controlled trial is more reliable than an anecdotal case report, as it is more likely to show results that actually reflect reality than the anecdote. With the first, there is a systematization of its investigations and control of biases, which is absent in the second. In this case, for hypotheses that require empirical analysis of that kind, it is more appropriate to use the first type of study precisely because it is the one that provides the best evidence, and its proper use makes that investigation scientific. On the other hand, using methods with low standards of investigative quality, such as anecdotal cases, would not be scientific. Therefore, for Hansson [7], pseudosciences can also be failed versions of sciences within humanities, and not only within sciences in the traditional meaning of the word. He defines pseudoscience in the following way: “A doctrine is a pseudoscience if and only if it satisfies the following two conditions: A. It includes at least one statement which (A1) pertains to an issue within the domains of science in the broad sense (the criterion of scientific domain), and (A2) suffers from such a severe lack of reliability that it cannot at all be trusted (the criterion of unreliability). B. Its major proponents try to create the impression that it represents the most reliable knowledge on its subject matter (the criterion of pretence)” [6 p.49- 50]. Hansson tries to distinguish disciplines from doctrines. Not every doctrine is pseudoscientific, but every pseudoscience is a doctrine. He defines a doctrine using the Oxford English dictionary, as follows: “a set of interconnected statements that is ‘taught or laid down as true concerning a particular subject or department of knowledge” [6 p. 49]. In a doctrine, Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 8 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 methodologies and statements are based on assumptions, and without them, there is no doctrine. In some cases, these statements may be wellfounded by evidence, an example being the theory of the evolution of species, while in others they may not, such as for psychoanalysis, which will be shown in the following sections. Similarly as what Hansson argues [6], If its most central ideas were removed from the psychoanalytic doctrine, as for example, about the existence of a psychodynamic unconscious, there would be no more psychoanalysis. The same would happen for the theory of the evolution of species: if the statements that living beings undergo natural selection, that more adapted individuals are more likely to survive, or their other claims were removed from it, then nothing would be left. This is different from a discipline: in disciplines, there are no presupposed methodologies or statements. Usually, disciplines refer to a field of study. Two examples could be psychology (when a specific psychological approach is not assumed beforehand), and biology, regarded as "the study of behavior" and "the study of life", respectively. It is important to notice that psychoanalysts do not need to claim that psychoanalysis is a science; certainly, part of the community agrees, while the other part disagrees with this statement, but what is explicitly said about the scientific status is not relevant at all. If a doctrine behaves as if it was a science — that is, if their proponent’s attitude implies that the assertions of the doctrine about the world are the most reliable in regard their object of study— regardless if it is explicitly presented as a science or not, it is already qualified to be judged by the demarcation criteria. Even after this explanation, defining the meaning of science and pseudoscience does not show what one should investigate regarding a specific doctrine in order to check if it is pseudoscientific. Hansson [7] addressed that previous demarcation proposals could not solve the problem and suffered a series of criticisms. Then, he proposed an alternative: a multicriteria list, constructed as a list of mistakes that can be made by pseudoscientific theories, but, unlike a sufficient and necessary criterion, it is not exhaustive. That means that a theory or assertion can be pseudoscientific even if it does not fit in all of the rules, and there is a possibility for it not to be despite classifying as one of them. It would work Ferreira CMC 9 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 as a tool that makes practical doctrine evaluation possible, besides the sufficient and necessary definition. It is important to notice that in most cases, if at least one of the items from the list matches the evaluated theory, then it is probably pseudoscientific. Hansson’s proposal is the following: “1. Belief in authority: it is contended that some person or persons have a special ability to determine what is true or false. Others have to accept their judgments. 2. Unrepeatable experiments: reliance is put on experiments that cannot be repeated by others with the same outcome. 3. Handpicked examples: handpicked examples are used although they are not representative of the general category that the investigation refers to. 4. Unwillingness to test: a theory is not tested although it is possible to do so. 5. Disregard of refuting information: observations or experiments that conflict with a theory are neglected. 6. Built-in subterfuge: the testing of a theory is so arranged that the theory can only be confirmed, never disconfirmed, by the outcome. 7. Explanations are abandoned without replacement: tenable explanations are given up without being replaced, so that the new theory leaves much more unexplained than the previous one” [7, p. 72-73; 8]. At the end of the seventh item, for considering it to be insufficient in addressing other problems concerning the behavior of certain theoretical explanations, the addition of an eighth will be proposed: obscurantism. This new demarcation of pseudoscience proposal, supported by the multicriteria list, makes it possible to evaluate if psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience or not, by analyzing how it relates to each of the items described. Results and Discussion Belief in Authority Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 10 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 Psychoanalysis is a “testimonial science” [4]; its theoretical concepts rely on its major proponents' clinical case interpretations. However, the authority argument is not sound if the authors do not have sufficient proof about what they say. Freud did not make use of systematic and controlled scientific investigations and not even statistics to achieve his conclusions [9], making it imperative for the reader that consults the foundations of the theory to trust that he possessed both different and special capabilities to find out the truth about how human psychology works. However, there are no reasons to believe that a human being that resorts only on his personal experience and decides not to use scientific tools would have the means to formulate the most epistemically warranted psychological theory. The other major psychoanalytic authors have also followed Freud's steps. For one to believe in Lacan's discourse, for example, it is necessary to first take it as true and attribute him an authority role, since the reader has neither a way to verify its claims independently, nor the resources to explicitly understand its meanings [10]. Besides that, in the founder's case, reasons to take his narratives into consideration might not even exist. When the topic is psychoanalysis, its proponents' honesty is an important aspect to be observed, precisely because the theory is based on their authority [4]. If there is no honesty, there should not be any reasons, even for those unaware of the problems related to anecdotal evidence, to continue adopting their assumptions. Dersken [11] demonstrates that Freud frequently used a variety of rhetorical strategies to avoid criticism and keep his theory's good appearance in front of the public, and he succeeded. The psychoanalyst affirmed several times that his theory did not consist of speculation, in an attempt to convince his reader that a solid empirical basis supported his conclusions, even while having none. To deal with the most severe counterarguments, he inverted the speech roles: Freud himself presented objections to his own doctrine in the most threatening way possible, and by doing so, it sounded like he was aware of the problems and would know how to reply to them. What other reason would he have to bring up all the criticism without knowing how to defend his theory from it? Even so, at the end of his discourse, the supposed reply was only evasive, the original Ferreira CMC 11 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 topic was altered, the burden of proof was inverted, or absolutely no answer was given, maintaining the original critiques still untouched. Crews [9] argues that during several moments Freud adjusted his narratives in order for them to fit in the result he previously aimed to achieve, no matter if what he was saying was really true. Many of his clinical cases developed in ways that were distinct from what was declared by him, went through a biased interpretative process, or did not obtain promising results. Anna O. was not someone with hysteria; in fact, she suffered from a chemical dependency of substances like morphine and chloral hydrate, and all her symptoms could be listed as possible effects of these [9, p. 354-360]. Dora, a young victim of sexual harassment, was reported as a protagonist of a hysteria case for not desiring to be involved with her abuser and feeling repulsed by his advances [9, p. 590-600]. In the Little Hans case, a five-year-old, Freud did not hesitate to give him a diagnosis even before knowing him personally: his fear of horses was in fact a fear of being castrated by his father, since Freud believed he sexually desired his mother [9, p. 645]. The Wolf Man was declared as cured by Freud; however, he kept being treated by several different analysts for decades, not obtaining any results [9, p. 651; 12]. Those are just some examples of famous clinical cases, but others suffer from the same problem [9]. The success of these kinds of adulterations and other rhetorical strategies contributed to the building and widespread recognition of Freud's authority role, as well as masking how fragile his proposal was. Unrepeatable experiments As discussed earlier, the theoretical concepts in psychoanalysis are sustained by Freud and the other major proponents’ clinical case reports, who also followed his tradition of producing anecdotal evidence. Until today, they maintain their authority over contemporary analysts: “André Green, when asked about what was new in psychoanalysis, answered: Freud. To this playful, but nonetheless very accurate answer, we could add the list of the great thinkers and practitioners of psychoanalysis who were essential to the several traditions in which the psychoanalytic movement was divided since Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 12 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 the '40s. Decades after their deaths, they continue to be what exists of new, as long as we know how to read them” [13, p. 10]. Although anecdotal evidence is still being used, in most cases, as the major means of psychoanalysis dissemination and production [14], important obstacles are placed when they are employed. A psychoanalytical clinical case is a type of process that cannot be replicated because it addresses a single subject individually. However, as Schmidt [15] argues, replication is one of the most central processes within empirical sciences, and sadly not even psychology gives proper attention to the matter. It possesses five major functions: control sampling errors, by verifying if the results obtained happened by chance alone; control internal validity, that is, if the procedures adopted were adequate to answer the research’s question; control the possibility of scientific fraud; allow a generalization of the findings to a larger/different population; and finally, verify if the first hypothesis of the experiment was correct. In the case of an unrepeatable experiment, the possibility of performing these analyses is thrown away. Besides the impossibility of replication, there are other problems, now related to human psychology: People are commonly victims of cognitive bias that distorts their judgment and leads to irrational interpretations more frequently than they usually notice [16], and therapists are not immune. An example could be confirmation bias: someone’s initial belief significantly impacts how they remember situations and how they interpret them, giving more importance to what apparently confirms their world view rather than paying attention to what could contradict it. In the case of a psychoanalyst, this could bring them to understand exactly what they yearned to, that is, what would supposedly confirm the analytic hypothesis, regardless if that was or was not the case [14, p. 139-140]. Even if a case report is not a good evidence, it would sound like a source of theoretical confirmation for an adept, as it is expected that it would reflect their own preconceptions. As Spence [17] shows, even if someone wished to analyze the veracity of the reported clinical phenomena, the person still has to face the fact that they are frequently replaced by fictional narrative. Their contents could be partially reported, omitted, distorted, and mixed with other case contents, even in a non-intentional way, precisely because they are based on the Ferreira CMC 13 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 therapist's memory. Psychoanalytical clinical case reports are not sufficiently controlled, so when they aim to support a human psychological theory, they end up being just fuel for a system of self-confirmations. There is no way to generalize a human psychological theory based on anecdotal clinical evidence, neither to guarantee its reliability, because a nonsystematized process does not aim to control variables that can interfere with the conclusions. At the same time, there are reasons to expect that distortions are going to happen. Handpicked examples As already discussed in previous sections, the widespread use of anecdotal evidence would be an excellent example to fulfill this third criterion, precisely because those cases are isolated and exposed to bias. However, along with them, another endeavor of contemporary psychoanalysis is neuropsychoanalysis. Neuropsychoanalysis is a movement that looks for an integration between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, and despite being rejected by part of the psychoanalytic community that wants no part in it, some others consider it to be a contemporary version of the theory. Callegaro [18, p. 207-20] argues that, instead of what the neuropsychoanalytical movement declares, the scientific literature shows something opposite to union: The evidence from neuroscience either refutes or directly conflicts with psychoanalysis. It is not as if it was plausible to use psychoanalysis as a reference model; it is in the new unconscious model that neuroscientists rely on, and not on the psychodynamic one. Paris [14, p. 94-99] argues that neuropsychoanalysis is not operating in order to evaluate Freudian and neuroscientific theories in an unbiased way, but rather starts from the principle of validating Freud's model beforehand, even though it showed not to have a consistent hypothesis with modern neuroscience. The author lists some reasons that show why neuropsychoanalysis is far from science: In this doctrine, it is previously assumed that Freud was right, and research would serve the only purpose of proving what was already obvious from the psychoanalytic point of view; the majority of neuropsychoanalysis papers do not present concrete data, Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 14 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 but theoretical speculations; methods used to measure basic psychoanalytic concepts are still pretty rudimentary; and, finally, there are many difficulties and problems, even in neuroscience itself, to adequately locate mental functions in specific brain areas. In the end, it is noticeable that neuropsychoanalysis consists in a great cherry picking of data, in which its proponents “attempt to systematically associate almost every neuroscientific concept or finding with a quote from Freud” [19, p. 170], giving the impression that when neurological phenomena such as anosognosia, memory problems, brain damage and others are associated with concepts from the Freudian model, that would mean that they were, from the beginning, an adequate theoretical explanation given by its founder, but that is not the case. Unwillingness to Test Most psychoanalysts assume as true that human subjectivity is above all possible scientific analysis [20-21]. Thus, since the foundation of psychoanalysis and until the present day with its contemporary version, psychoanalysts carry on the tradition of being resistant to testing their hypothesis, whether they are about clinical effectiveness or theoretical constructs. Melanie Klein, for example, can be “dismissed (…) from the point of view of empirical science (…) while many of Klein’s ideas were based on what she called ‘infant observation’, they actually consisted only of speculations about what infants might be thinking” [14, p. 55]. Also, “there has never been empirical research on any of the constructs that Lacan proposed” [14, p. 122], and “neither neo-Freudian models, nor ego psychology, nor relational psychoanalysis, nor self-psychology, have ever conducted empirical investigations of their theories, or of the process and outcome of the treatment approaches derived from these ideas” [14, p. 55-56]. Despite the different opinions in the psychoanalytic community about the scientific status of the doctrine, it is possible to observe that the majority of adepts have great resistance towards the adoption of systematized tools and processes for data collection, under the argument that their object of Ferreira CMC 15 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 study, humans, are too singular and unique to be understood by a supposed “positivistic science”, in which only empirical experiments are allowed [22]. It is explicitly said by psychoanalysts, for example, that they believe “that today it is essential to demonstrate that psychoanalysis does not need new scientific foundations that would be provided in a 'systematic' and 'safe' way” [23, p. 15], that the psychoanalytic cure could not be apprehended in terms of efficacy criteria, as would be done in psychiatry [24], and that the establishment of criteria for assessing psychotherapeutic effectiveness would be considered a threat to subjectivity [20]. There is even a clear opposition to those who seek these objectives: “What we can perceive in contemporary times, is that many professionals in the psi field, when they come across the symptom presented by the individual, seek to annihilate it, not taking into account the ethical dimension through which the symptom manifests itself. This means that the vast contemporary psychotherapeutic proposals that announce to the world a way of treatment increasingly supported by science, in addition to the current proposal in the field of mental health that plays insistently with the possibility of defining a common norm, are not committed to the experience revealed by psychoanalysis (...). We will see that psychoanalysis poses itself as an obstacle to this psychological and medical attitude” [25, p. 242]. As previously seen, using the broad definition of science, disciplines such as philosophy, history, linguistics, and other humanities can be considered sciences, even without using traditional experimentation, because the most adequate methods to look for truth in those particular circumstances are being employed. However, psychology and psychiatry are not in the same situation: There is no reliable way to acquire the most epistemically justified beliefs about human behavior without resorting to systematic empirical methodologies. Humans do not have the ability to, using only speculation, develop reliable enough beliefs about these topics. Therefore, while psychoanalysis rejects those methods, it cannot be the most reliable psychological doctrine of our time. Instead, some of its adepts are aligning it to relativistic positions. This fuels the notion that science is only one more discourse, and it could not claim to have better interpretations about reality than any other: “The fact remains that science is a discourse. As banal as that statement may seem, it implies a dethroning of Science and a reassessment of science as one Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 16 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 discourse among many. Freud may be interpreted as translating ‘rationality’ into ‘rationalization’, and Lacan's discourse theory suggests that there are as many different claims to rationality as there are different discourses” [26, p. 138]. Science is accused of being the real dogma, and psychoanalysis then comes to break it [27]. Therefore, it does not have to bow to its methods, including systematic testing [22]. In fact, some aspects of the psychanalytic doctrine have the stated purpose of serving “as an epistemological obstacle to the attempt of scientifically addressing the psyche” (p. 237), and also to the evidence based treatments of mental health disorders [25]. Psychoanalysis requires the unreasonable: it demands special protection and would not admit being judged like any other scientific doctrine should be, while also aims to have a similar status that any other would have. However, if the same level of recognition and appreciation is demanded, then it must be evaluated by similar requirements for rigor and presentation of evidence. Despite the majority of the community being averted to hypothesis testing, there are some exceptions to this rule. Attachment theory is probably the most promising contemporary revision of psychoanalytic theory, for being the only one that is more open to the testing of hypothesis and empirical research [14, p. 62], and for the same reason it is rejected by other psychoanalysts as something that is not legitimately part of the doctrine [14, p. 56-57]. Unfortunately, attachment theory does not consider genetic and temperamental aspects [14, p. 58], and its predictions between child attachment patterns and adulthood are very weak [28], while psychoanalysis places the major causes of adult psychopathologies precisely in the childhood. About psychoanalysis as a treatment: even though there was great resistance from the community, some studies on its psychotherapeutic efficacy were conducted. Nowadays, long-term psychotherapies usually do not have convincing evidence for their effectiveness, and in this category long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy is included [14]. One example can be observed with the Leichsenring and Rabung meta-analysis [29]. Despite being one of the most cited works done to evaluate this kind of psychotherapy, it was severely criticized for failing in all the quality criteria required of meta-analyses [30]. One of the common strategies that Ferreira CMC 17 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 psychoanalysts adopt to deal with the lack of good evidence is turning to their personal experiences, and this can be observed in the following report published by the International Psychoanalytical Association: “It is easy to be critical of psychoanalytic studies. There are no definitive studies which show psychoanalysis to be unequivocally effective relative to an active placebo or an alternative method of treatment. There are no methods available that might definitively indicate the existence of a psychoanalytic process. Most studies have major limitations which might lead critics of the discipline to discount their results. Others have limitations that are so grave that even a sympathetic reviewer might be inclined to discount the findings. (...) As psychoanalysts we all know that psychoanalysis works. Our own analytic experience is probably sufficient in most instances to persuade us of its effectiveness” [31, p. 283]. When compared to long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy, the shortterm psychodynamic one has a higher number of studies reported in the literature, with mostly favorable results [14]. However, psychotherapy in general faces problems with higher complexity than this article can cover. The majority of results on the topic, no matter what type of psychotherapy is investigated, tend to show positive effects, with few exceptions. Although, there is evidence that, in many cases, those results are biased or have questionable methodology. Dragioti [32] conducted an umbrella review of meta-analyses about various types of psychotherapy (including psychodynamic). They realized that only 16 of 247 meta-analyses (7%) were capable of providing good evidence without bias, and none were from psychodynamic or psychoanalytic approaches. Besides the discussion about psychoanalysis's scientific status, this is undoubtedly a topic that requires more attention from clinical professionals, psychologists and psychiatrists. Disregard of refuting information There is evidence that many of the key concepts of psychoanalysis are wrong, but notwithstanding, they keep being adopted in Brazilian universities and as a theoretical basis for clinical practice. The empirical literature did not support the psychoanalytical theory about dreams [33], memory or repression [34]. The brain does not work making permanent Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 18 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 recordings about situations that are then repressed [14, p. 30]. Despite recognizing that unconscious processes exist and significantly impact human beings, the psychodynamic unconscious that is governed by repressed desires and drives does not receive empirical support [14, p. 29- 30]. As an alternative, the new unconscious theory is more coherent with contemporary discoveries in the field of neuroscience [14, p. 29-30; 18]. Psychoanalysis ignores other possible variables, like genetics, social class, and more, treating a single and specific traumatic event that happened during the subject’s childhood as the causation of present disorders. However, there is no good evidence of causal links between specific, traumatic childhood experiences and disorders in adult life [35]. Other stressing events that happen during an individual's life are much more impactful than the infancy ones, and social disadvantages could better explain the worse mental health outcomes of these groups [35]. There is no good evidence that remembering past events would be a good route to cure psychopathological symptoms, despite it being the usual route of analysis [14, p. 107]. Even with all those disparities between scientific data and the analytic view, those concepts are kept alive until the present day. Built-in subterfuge This item covers similar aspects to Popper’s criticism. However, it is not the same as the falsifiability criterion, since what matters for falsifiability is the possibility of a given theory to be proven false. For Popper, there is no such thing as “confirmation” by induction. This item proposed by Hansson better encompasses theory designs that are always confirming, or that can only confirm the original hypothesis, in which alternative outcomes are not possible. About the topic, Rillaer [36] provides a group of examples of why psychoanalysis cannot be disconfirmed, only continuously confirmed. With it, everything could be explained in the light of unconscious processes, and finding contrary evidence would be inconceivable: “Have you forgotten your umbrella in a friend's house? You want to come back to his house. (…) Does he react badly to your interpretation? ‘He is defending Ferreira CMC 19 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 himself’, he is resisting to the ‘id’ that talks inside him, ‘without the ego noticing’. Does he criticize Freud or Lacan? He is revolting against the Father. (…) Does your son fear horses? He fears being castrated by his father because he desires his mother. Does your analysis make you suffer more each day? You are finally entering the deepest layers of your unconscious. Do the analyst's prices seem excessive? You are having a ‘negative transference’ or a ‘regression to the analsadistic stage’. After five years of analysis, do you still feel painful symptoms? You have not dug deep enough, you desire to suffer because your superego is excessively strong” [36, p. 154]. A psychoanalyst could counterargue that this would be a case of wild psychoanalysis, and within the clinical context they would not impose interpretations, but instead would build them in a unique relationship between therapist and client, reserved for the clinical environment [37]. However, this does not refute the objection that psychoanalysis is a system that operates by those rules. It is not for the depth of the dialogue or the time of interaction that it would happen differently. Boudry and Buekens [38] argue that psychoanalysis operates similarly to a conspiracy theory, in which criticism can always be labeled as derived from resistance, and in the case of psychoanalysis, it is an unconscious resistance. Not even a critic or patient’s rejection of the analytic explanations could be seen as a possible counterexample: It would only be a major confirmation that unconscious and unobservable processes are happening. Also, if they agree with the offered interpretations, the explanation stays the same: It was a process originated from the unconscious. In the end, when dealing with the psychodynamic unconscious, there is no possibility to accept contrary evidence. In relation to psychoanalysis, for all circumstances “interpretation can be a weapon” [39, p. 12]. Therefore, the excessive number of explanations that would fit all the possible cases is not really explicative; it only seems to be. The chosen interpretations to deal with the variety of human psychological phenomena are not based on good and carefully collected scientific evidence. Instead, those are concepts that lack empirical support, used to explain every behavior and also its opposite. "Psychoanalysis is indeed irrefutable, because it can say everything and its opposite — summoning up the Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 20 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 'servile' unconscious testimonial is enough, as it is always ready to bow to the circumstances’ demands" [40, p. 140]. Explanations are abandoned without replacement The definitions given to the concepts of "cure", "health" and "disease" in psychoanalysis fit this criterion. Neves [23] says that the discussion about the cure in contemporary psychoanalysis cannot occur if it does not start with a critique of the traditional meaning of the term, and the same goes for the other two concepts. The author argues that psychoanalysis understands that, according to medical point of view, which adopts the traditional use of these, a state of health should refer to a harmonious state, completely free of diseases and pathologies. In addition, unlike medical objectives, Priszkulnik [41] states that "psychoanalysis is opposed to the objective of mental health to reintegrate the individual into the social community". Still according to Neves [23], psychoanalysts understand that in medicine “cure” would mean conforming to an idealized mode of operation based on ideas of normality that are socially accepted and expected, starting from the elimination of diseases and the reestablishment of the previously present health state. Or, more succinctly, it would be "the realization of an experience that leads the individual to health through the elimination of the disease" [23, p. 33]. Considering the traditional definition, psychoanalysis would accuse the existence of hidden intentions behind the goal of curing people in distress: this would, in reality, be an attempt to exert social control [23, p. 16]. Therefore, it would make more sense to be helpless instead of cured, since: “We must not forget that being helpless, from both psychoanalytic and political points of view, means to a large extent having crossed the ghost of infinite protection by the instituted power. To be helpless (...) is to sustain the political action as an action that forces the impossible not to cease not writing itself in the situation" [23, p. 28]. For some, like Nasio, it would not even make sense to conceive healing as a concept: Ferreira CMC 21 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 “We cannot say that the cure, understood as a reduction or disappearance of suffering linked to symptoms, is a psychoanalytic concept. We also cannot say it is an objective towards which the treatment should aim, or a criterion that allows us to evaluate its progress (...) we cannot make cure a concept, or an objective, or a criterion, and that is equivalent to not giving in to the influence of the medical model, which tends to hypostasize this cure, to give it a status, to elevate it to the dignity of a concept (...) there is no psychoanalytic concept of cure, and that cannot be a goal that the analyst should pursue in their practice, differently from how it happens in medicine” [42, p. 160]. Even with these considerations, some proposals for new definitions were supposedly made, in order to replace the traditional ones; however, they are usually empty and worse than the previous ones. "Health in psychoanalysis can only be understood as a normativity that becomes individualized, so it is impossible to think of it as the expression of an absolute value, that is, of a general norm" [23, p. 28]. It could also be added the observation that "it is true that psychoanalysis does not take health as a constitutive element of its ethics and cure policy" [43, p. 23]. Regarding the definition of disease, we can understand it in psychoanalysis as being "a productive experience of indeterminacy" [23, p. 18], while also considering that "the disease, whether it be psychic or organic, does not mean anything other than the reduction of the tolerance margin for changes in the environment" [23, p. 28]. In fact, they affirm that there is something special within the field of disease: "being sick is, initially, assuming an identity with great performative force" [44, p. 293], and the curative ideal "aims to weaken the power that inhabits the experiences of the pathological, the abnormal, the inhuman and of helplessness" [23, p. 21]. As for the cure, several options are offered in psychoanalysis. Some of them are as follows: "getting cured is, therefore, to build and experience a new order, that is, the cure involves experiencing unprecedented ways of adjusting to the environment" [23, p. 18]. Or also, “to carry out an experiment that is nowhere and cannot be registered in the situation” [23, p. 8]. For psychoanalysts, "the cure in psychoanalytic experience can be defined, fundamentally, by the idea of transformation, that is, the realization of a subjective experience that is not the reestablishment of the norm nor the expected result of performing a treatment method" [23, p. 84]. Dunker and Peron [24, p. 89] argue that the concept of cure can have Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 22 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 different interpretations based on Freud's work, in addition to not being related to traditional medicine. One of them could be that the "cure coincides with the knowledge of the causes of the symptoms" [24, p. 86]. In Neves's [23] view, Freud and Lacan's works have as their legacy the definition of cure as an experience that touches the impossible [23, p. 25]. According to Nasio “the cure is an imaginary value, an opinion, a prejudice, a preconception, just as nature, happiness or justice are” [42, p. 160]. Not only that, but according to the definitions given in psychoanalysis, "the cure as the realization of a singular experience will not be identical to anything" [43, p. 24]. In any case, it is important to be aware of the fact that even if it is understood in these ways adapted by the doctrine and even by Freud himself as a “reorganization of the Ego”, it remains as an ideal that is “harmful to the analysis and to the psychoanalyst” [42, p. 167]: a therapist who seeks the cure of his patient would possibly be under the influence of feelings of pride and narcissism [42, p. 168]. Psychoanalysis, even though it is treated as a psychotherapy, does not have curing as a goal as seen in Lacan’s words, quoted by Nasio: "(...) the mechanism (of analysis) is not oriented towards the cure as a purpose. I am not saying anything that Freud has not already powerfully formulated: every inflection towards the cure as a purpose — making the analysis a pure and simple means to a precise end — gives something that would be linked to the shortest path which could only falsify the analysis" [42, p. 159]. For psychoanalysis, the definition of cure as an experience that leads to health must be replaced by an experience that is nowhere, does not concern any possible situation, has nothing to do with the objectives proposed by a treatment, and is impossible. It would not be identical to anything, and if it is not identical to anything, it could not even be identical to itself, and that would constitute a logical contradiction. In psychoanalysis, the cure is imaginary, and even harmful. In the case of health, this would be an individualized normativity that is not included in the ethical demands of the doctrine. Meanwhile, attempts to treat illness are accused of being attempts at social control, and influenced by narcissism and pride. Diseases and pathologies could not, in psychoanalysis, be considered as a deviation from the organic standard, but instead they are classified as sources of some kind of renegade power, Ferreira CMC 23 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 instead of suffering. These concepts, in their many variations, are supposedly presented as possible replacements for the traditional concepts of "cure", "health" and "disease". However, even though the traditional definitions can be criticized and have gaps, the definitions adopted in psychoanalysis make these concepts much more vague and distant from reality than their original versions, with some of them to a point where they are no longer comprehensible. This makes the new proposal much less explanatory than the traditional one. In this situation, there are at least two problems: in addition to having explanations (in this case, definitions) abandoned without a good replacement, this is a case of obscurantism. Considering this aspect of the doctrine, which is not restricted to the definitions of the three concepts presented in this section, this may suggest that the seventh criterion in Hansson's list may be insufficient to capture other problems related to the way in which explanations of a pseudoscientific doctrine are treated. Taking this into account, in this article a new item will be proposed, introduced with an eighth item to be added to the original list. It could be described like this: 8. Obscurantism: The theoretical concepts or statements of a theory have a nonexistent or nebulous meaning to the understanding, which allows the realization of arbitrary changes, that is, without plausible justifications for doing so. Obscurantism A lot could be said about the obscurantism problem, its relations with pseudoscience, and its pertinence as a part of a demarcation criteria. However, there is not a claim of being exhaustive in this section, despite being offered the following explanations for the introduction of this new item: Obscurantism is a communication style, commonly adopted by pseudoscientists as a rhetorical strategy, that happens when the presentation of the assertions or concepts in a theory is done in a significantly imprecise way, preventing an adequate comprehension of its proposal. This protects it from objections: Since its definitions are Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 24 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 excessively vague, it is always possible to accuse the critic of not comprehending it, as well as alternating the definitions in order to adopt or abandon its numerous meanings, using them respectively in the most opportune moments. An obscurantist text, despite appearing to bring a robust content about a topic, in fact does not [10]. This seems relevant especially when comparing it to the definition of pseudoscience: Similarly, in the obscurantism case, an impression of scientificity is created when in fact there is a considerable distance from science (in the broad sense). For that reason, the introduction of this item seems justified. In some obscurantism cases, a series of claims are made, but in reality, they are proclaimed as phrases that lack truth value, that is, phrases that cannot be true or false. In others, even if some meaning could be salvaged, an unclearness is imposed under their real definition by the own author, preventing readers from tracing precise or consensual interpretations about what they intended to say. This creates more difficulties for placing objections: It is harder to criticize a position that one cannot adequately comprehend compared to another that exposes its arguments explicitly and clearly. Also, it is important to notice that, under many circumstances, concept changes are welcome in science, but in order to do so, reasonable justifications must be presented. This is not taken into account by the obscurantist. In the case of psychoanalysis, some things have changed from Freud's times to the present day, but despite not being many, they also were not adopted based on the emergence of good evidence. The great psychoanalytical theories of the present are still used, adopted and taught without going through empirical testing [14], showing that the changes were arbitrary and probably aimed just to adapt to each age’s cultural climate. An example of this could be the change in the pathological status regarding the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians, as well as penis envy [4]. A theory supposedly evolving and changing its concepts over time only has merits if those changes are made based on good evidence, and not only by cultural influence; after all, even religious movements change their explanations about the world as the centuries go by, and this is no reason to classify them as scientific. Ferreira CMC 25 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 Cioffi [4] points out that the etiological role of sexuality suffered with an opportunistic change of meanings. Ideas about sexuality, eroticism, and libido had their definitions chosen arbitrarily by Freud according to the context: When questioned by the skeptic, they became something that would represent fraternal love, affection, or in the case of sexual drives they would be desires that could be satisfied by using a variety of senses, including non-genital ones. Meanwhile, in safer and more receptive environments, those conveniently change back to mean "sexual" in the traditional sense. “As psychoanalytic theory is entirely empty, it is also, at the same time, supremely adaptable. When some concept of the theory shows to be hard to sustain, or even downright embarrassing (…) it is enough to silently abandon it and take a new theoretical rabbit out of the immense top hat of the unconscious. This is what psychoanalysts like to describe as the ‘progress’ of psychoanalysis (…). What is given as progress in psychoanalysis is nothing but the ultimate interpretation, that is, the most acceptable in a specific institutional, historical or cultural context” [40, p. 140-141]. Buekens and Boudry [10] show that Lacanian psychoanalysis is another example of obscurantism. Lacan assumes that the unconscious is structured as a language, and defends that his writings are equivalent to the expression of his own unconscious. The adherence to an obscurantist style is, therefore, justified from his point of view. In this way, any systematic effort to interpret him would be destined to fail, and this immunizes the doctrine against any possible criticism. Even if Lacan gave the impression of being an authority about human psychology that would transmit his ideas through occult means, it would be up to the reader to interpret him (in the countless ways of doing so), while still being susceptible to possible accusations of not really understanding him. Buekens and Boudry [10] argue that since it is not possible to trace definitive conclusions about what Lacan really meant to say, the only thing left for the reader is to subjectively interpret him according to their personal experience, what creates a significant divergence of interpretations by the adepts themselves. The psychoanalyst not only used an obscurantist language in his works, but also assumed and defended its use explicitly: Será a Psicanálise uma Pseudociência? 26 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 “I would say that it is with a deliberate, if not entirely deliberate, intention that I pursue this discourse in such a way as to offer you the opportunity to not quite understand. This margin enables you yourselves to say that you think you follow me, that is, that you remain in a problematic position, which always leaves the door open to a progressive rectification” [45, p. 164]. Conclusion This article pointed out that psychoanalysis — not only on its classic, but also with its contemporary version — ends up checking all of the seven items in Hansson’s multicriteria list. It also fits the eighth item that was introduced in this work. So, in this way, psychoanalysis checks eight out of eight demarcation of pseudoscience’s items. The evidence presented in this article suggests that with both Popper and Hansson’s demarcation proposals, and taking into account its traditional and contemporary versions, psychoanalysis is indeed a pseudoscience. Even if the impression that it represents the most reliable human psychological theory is created by its proponents, that is not the case, because it considerably deviates from scientific standards of quality. Although research in psychoanalysis is widespread in Brazil, its objections are not being discussed in the literature, and this may be an indicator of alienation [46]. The maintenance of a dogmatic approach on a doctrine inserted in the academic environment is dangerous, since it can lead to scientific stagnation and prevent the full development of its disciplines, which in the case of psychoanalysis are psychology and psychiatry. It is important to further discuss criticisms of psychoanalysis, given that it is still treated as one of the main theoretical and clinical models for the comprehension of human behavior inside the academy. Even from an ethical perspective, it is important to carry out practices and build theories that are compatible with the best scientific evidence. There is no good moral justification for believing in whatever the theory, if it does not have enough evidence in its favor [47]. Ferreira CMC 27 Debates em Psiquiatria, Rio de Janeiro, 2021; 11:1-33 https://doi.org/10.25118/2763-9037.2021.v11.58 Acknowledgments There are no conflicts of interest associated with the publication of this article. Financial support sources are nonexistent. I would like to thank Alícia Cristina de Sales Braga, Vitor Douglas de Andrade and Caio César de Souza Barbosa for various types of incentives and support received on different phases of the development of this article.

The death-drive theory has not found wide acceptance among Freud's followers. With significant exceptions like Melanie Klein, it has been explicitly denounced as misconceived biology, unsubstantiated speculation, logically incoherent and/or without evidence. It has also been attributed to Freud's own painful personal circumstances: the death of his daughter, the death of a grandson, his own illness (cancer), and his lifelong preoccupation with death. Of those who have been sympathetic to the idea, most have tended to tame it - as indeed did Freud himself. One move was to rewrite the instinct as largely an instinct of aggression. But for Freud the aggressive aspect of the death drive had been secondary; the instinct was primarily self-destructive. Sadism derives from a more primordial masochism, which means in effect that human aggression is, originally, self destructiveness. Of all subsequent theorists of psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan takes the death drive most seriously, and most contemporary psychoanalytic attention to it comes via him. To his credit, Lacan does not underplay or tame the death drive, and he locates Freud firmly within the Western tradition when he remarks that Freud questioned life as to its meaning and his answer was not that it had none 'which is a convenient way of washing one's hands of the whole business' - but that life has 'only one meaning, that in which desire is borne by death' (Ecrits, p. 277). According to Lacan, the Freudian world is one not of things, nor even of being, but rather of desire. More so even than Freud, Lacan finds in desire 'the paradoxical, deviant, erratic, eccentric, even scandalous character by which it is distinguished from need'. Although this distinction has been 'always obvious to moralists worthy of the name', psychoanalysis nevertheless misses the point by pursuing an obscurantist reduction of desire to need (p. 286). And that, for Lacan, is a cardinal error. This distinction belween desire and need leads him to dwell on something else in both Freud and earlier writers, moralists and otherwise: the relation between desire and lack. In modern psychoanalysis we find a secularized, intensified version of an existential perception that goes back a long way, even though the immediate influences here are Heidegger and Kojeve: Desire is a relation of being to lack. This lack is the lack of being properly speaking. It isn't the lack of this or that, but lack of being whereby the being exists. (Lacan, Seminar, 11.222-3) For Lacan, death is the name for a primordial absence intrinsic to presence; as John Forrester puts it, 'presence includes as its very condition the limit beyond which is its absence' (p. 176).16 To bind desire so resolutely into lack and absence means that it inevitably becomes a kind of essential negativity (Lacan, Seminar, 1.146)*' - something premised on an initial failure of satisfaction and which, as such, comes to exist only by virtue of its own alienation; as Juliet Mitchell puts it, 'Desire persists as an effect of a primordial absence and it therefore indicates that, in this area, there is something fundamentally impossible about satisfaction itself (Lacan. Feminine Sexuality, p. 6). One consequence of this is a radical fragmentation of the human subject.18 In one respect Lacan recasts the familiar metaphysical idea that life is rooted in death: 'it is death that sustains existence' (Ecrits, p. 300). In his development of this idea he combines diverse elements of the Western tradition of desire's impossibility: a theology of desire as death, crossed with something more romantic if no less severe - desire as annihilating excess, a primordial discord. The two elements are fused in those places where, for example, he speaks of 'that desperate affirmation of life that is the purest form in which we recognize the death instinct' (p. 104). These ideas then get reworked according to structuralist and linguistic preoccupations, as when he speaks of the 'frenzy' of desire 'mocking Ihe abyss of Ihe infinite', and of how this amounts to 'no other derangement of instinct than that of being caught in the rails - eternally stretching forth towards the desire for something else - of metonymy. Hence its "perverse" fixation at the very suspension-point of the signifying chain where the memory-screen is immobilized and the fascinating image of the fetish is petrified' (p. 167). In the same vein Lacan suggests that it is from death that existence takes on all the meaning it has; the lack which is at the heart of desire is also the price that human beings pay for their admission to language and culture. Death makes life possible in that it makes meaning and representation possible; it is not only before speech but 'primordial to the birth of symbols' (pp. 104-5, 300). Hence Lacan's most well-known formulation, that the unconscious is structured like a language, and his claim to have demonstrated 'the profound relationship uniting the notion of the death instinct to the problems of speech' (Four Fundamental Concepts, p. 20; Merits, p. 101). Richard Boothby regards this as the most radical and innovative aspect of Lacan. I remain unconvinced.19 Lacan's invocations of death's centrality to life are more derivative than their complex, often obscure, formulations suggest.20 When he declares that All that life is concerned with is seeking repose as much as possible while awaiting death. This is what devours the time of the suckling baby at the beginning of its existence... Life is concerned solely with dying {Seminar. 11.233) we can hear Freud and Schopenhauer most closely, but also Montaigne (especially in that last assertion - 'Life is concerned solely with dying'), who also, incidentally, consolidated his own perception of this truth with extensive citation of classical sources. In the giving over of the newborn child to death we might hear too the early Christian Fathers. Lacan does not exactly disguise his precedents; the passage just cited continues with a reference to Hamlet's 'to die, to sleep, perchance to dream' and to the idea developed by philosophers in antiquity that it would have been better not to have been born. But (and this recalls Freud's own evasive acknowledgment of his influences) in Lacan these allusions to the past are fleeting, in passing, almost secretive; the implication is that these past writers anticipate something which can only properly, and only now, be understood through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis, whose complexity is, at the same time, almost guaranteed to defeat the attempt. Some at least of that complexity is obscurantist. In the wake of contemporary cultural developments, including the perceived failure of sexual radicalism and the trauma of AIDS, there are those who have turned to Lacan for a more honest view of desire, and, via him, are reconsidering a severe account of human desire. I should not speak for them; what I find in Lacan is an overtheorized expression of something more significantly and relevantly expressed elsewhere (in Freud and before). It this respect I believe he is symptomatic of a much wider tendency in (post-) modern theory. But in terms of his influence alone Lacan remains significant for this study. By crossing Freud's death drive with the philosophy of lack and nothingness derived from Kojeve's version of Hegel (itself influenced by Heidegger), he continues to drive death ever further into being; now, perhaps more inexorably than ever before, death is the lack which drives desire. In doing that he also exemplifies another significant tendency in modern thought which I have already remarked, namely the antihumanist wish to decentre 'man' in the name of a philosophy which is truly adequate to the complexity of being, yet which seeks to retain a residual human mastery in the very effort of articulating this complexity. As we have seen, the philosophical bid to comprehend the truth of being was always a form of intellectual empowerment - even, or rather especially, when issuing in the declaration that life, desire and the world have to be renounced. But modern theory, having lost faith in older philosophical notions of truth, now half-settles for the mastery of a new kind of complexity which it partly produces in order to enable this performance of mastery. Phoenix-like, the omniscient, masterful and above all complex analytic of the modern theorist rises above his sacrifice of 'man' to death.

In an era in which psychiatry is dominated by neuroscience-based models, psychological constructs tend to be neglected and may be taken seriously only when they have neural correlates.37 Some psychoanalysts have sought to link their model with neurobiological research and to claim that newer methods of studying the brain can validate their theories.5,6¶ Mark Solms, a South African neuropsychologist, is the founder of “neuropsychoanalysis.” This new field, with its own society and its own journal, proposes to use neuroimaging to confirm analytic theories. Its key idea is that subjective experience and the unconscious mind can be observed through neuroimaging.5 It is known that brain processes can be seen on brain imaging even before they have entered consciousness.38 However, claims that neuroimaging validate Freud’s model of the unconscious can be based only on “cherry-picking” the literature. The observed correspondences are superficial and hardly support the complex edifice of psychoanalytic theory.¶ Solms39 has also suggested that Freud’s ideas about dreams are consistent with neuroscience research based on rapid eye movement (REM) activity. This attempt to rescue a century-old theory met with opposition from dream researchers who consider Freud’s clinical speculations to be incompatible with empirical data.40,41¶ The proposal to establish a discipline of neuropsychoanalysis also met with a mixed reception from traditional psychoanalysts, who did not want to dilute Freud’s wine with neuroscientific water.42 Neuroscientists, who are more likely to see links to psychology as lying in cognitive science,43 have ignored this idea. In summary, neuropsychoanalysis is being used a way to justify long-standing models, without attempting to find something new or to develop an integration of perspectives on psychology.¶ However, Eric Kandel,44 influential in the light of his Nobel Prize for the study of the neurochemistry of memory, has taken a sympathetic view of the use of biological methods to study psychoanalytic theory. Kandel had wanted to be an analyst before becoming a neuroscientist.45 But Kandel, who does not actively practice psychiatry, may be caught in a time warp, unaware that psychoanalysis has been overtaken by competitors in the field of psychotherapy.¶ Another attempt to reconcile psychoanalysis with science has come from the literature on neuroplasticity.46 It is now known that neurogenesis occurs in some brain regions (particularly the hippocampus) during adulthood and that neural connections undergo modification in all parts of the brain. There is also evidence that CBT can produce brain changes that are visible using imaging.47 These findings have not been confirmed in psychoanalytic therapies. However, Norman Doidge, a Canadian psychoanalyst, has argued that psychoanalysis can change the brain.48 This may be the case for all psychotherapies. However, more recently, Doidge49 has claimed that mental exercises can reverse the course of severe neurological and psychiatric problems, including chronic pain, stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and autism. While these books have been best-sellers, most of their ideas in the second volume,49 based on anecdotes rather than on clinical trials, have had little impact in medicine. This story underscores the difficulty of reconciling the perspectives and methods of psychoanalysis with scientific methods based on empirical testing.¶ Psychoanalysis and the Humanities¶ Psychoanalysis claimed to be a science but did not function like one. It failed to operationalize its hypotheses, to test them with empirical methods, or to remove constructs that failed to gain scientific support.1 In this way, the intellectual world of psychoanalysis more closely resembles the humanities. Today, with few psychiatrists or clinical psychologists entering psychoanalytic training, the door has been opened to practitioners with backgrounds in other disciplines, including the humanities.¶ This trend is related to a hermeneutic mode of thought,50 which focuses on meaningful interpretations of phenomena, rather than on empirical testing of hypotheses and observations. Since the time of Freud, the typical psychoanalytic paper has consisted of speculations backed up with illustrations, similar to the methods of literary theory and criticism.¶ One model currently popular in the humanities is “critical theory.”51 This postmodernist approach uses Marxist concepts to explain phenomena ranging from literature to politics. It proposes that truth is entirely relative and often governed by hidden social forces. In its most radical form, in the work of Michel Foucault,52 critical theory and postmodernism take an antiscience position, denying the existence of objective truth and viewing scientific findings as ways of defending the “hegemony” of those in power

Nothing could be further from the theoretical argument that Wilder- son presents. Emphasizing an insight central to Afropessimist thought as a whole, he declares, “Blacks are not Human subjects, but are structurally inert props, implements for the execution of White and non-Black fantasies and sado-masochistic pleasures.”11 By recognizing Blackness as external to the on- tological framework of the human, Wilderson, building on earlier work by theorists like Ronald Judy, can identify anti-Blackness as inherent in the con- stitution of (human) being. It follows from this that politics can never escape the anti-Blackness that structures the human in the first place. Both Seale and Kendi, like Angela Davis, push discussions of racism beyond the trap of intentionality and individual guilt, leading to difficult questions about structural determination that remind us, in Davis’s words, that “if we don’t take seriously the ways in which racism is embedded in structures of insti- tutions, if we assume that there must be an identifiable racist . . . who is the perpetrator, then we won’t ever succeed in eradicating racism.”12 But in doing so they also insist that those structures, because they manifest themselves in human institutions, are therefore subject to change by humans. For Wilderson and others constructing the intellectual framework of Afropessimism, that very embeddedness in the human makes structural change impossible. Thus, Wilderson rejects the prospect of “coherent liberation campaigns” for Black subjects; Afropessimism, he writes, “describe[s] a structural problem but of- fer[s] no structural solution.”13 From within the precepts of Afropessimism such a solution cannot exist. The meaning of structure has shifted here from the contingent power to shape and control particular institutions to an ontological imperative bound up with social organization as such. That imperative, as Bad Educa- tion maintains, grounds being in being meaningful, in conforming to the logic of thinkability that organizes human community. As the introduction argues by attending closely to a passage from L’Étourdit, the Symbolic’s on- tology arises, according to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, through the exclusion of what he calls ab-sens, the nonrelation to meaning. Only this enabling subtraction of what, in itself, is subtracted from sense (even before there is a sense from which it could be subtracted), only this negation of a primal negativity, allows the ontology of the human through the language that differentiates culture from nature. To the extent that ab-sens, according to Lacan, is also what “designates . . . sex,” its ontology-producing exclusion makes sex external to meaning and being, simultaneously incomprehensible and ontologically impossible.14 Unlike the sex whose definition Justice Alito can blithely cite, sex for Lacan pertains to the Real, to the beyond of signification where definition does not obtain. As discussed in Bad Education, then, the sex that ab-sens would designate, a priori absented from being, gives way to sex as the difference that governs the Symbolic as sens-absexe, Lacan’s term for the ontological order linking sexual difference to meaning. Sens-absexe permits signification precisely by absenting sex as ab-sens. It creates, with that negative gesture, the world that swells into being through words. Because sex as ab-sens is exorbitant to the logic of difference and meaning, however, it can have no name of its own. Only through catachresis can it indicate the state of nondifferentiation made unthinkable by sens-absexe, which consigns it to the void of nonbeing that enables being to be. To that extent, the sex foreclosed with the subtraction of ab-sens coincides with incest in psychoanalysis, where incest is seen as impossible either to cognize or to enact, constituting as it does, in Lacanian terms, the impossible Real of sex. Inconceivable in its radical nondifferen- tiation, incest figures, like sex and ab-sens, the exclusion that structures the Symbolic (as the order of language, ontology, and the human) and permits it to function as the reality procured by sens-absexe. With this we may seem to have wandered far from the murder of George Floyd, but Bad Education argues, to the contrary, that this is the immutable structure to which “structural racism” finally refers. While acknowledging historical differences in lived experience, socioeconomic mobility, degree of precarity, access to power, and positioning in the cultural imaginary among those read as Black, queer, woman, trans*, or any other category of social (non)“being” collectively delegitimated as other than human,

In particular, I am interested in how this archive of African queer literature appeal to this time relation made possible by “queer” to reanimate debates that have been side-lined, if not displaced, by an overly pragmatic turn in queer theory, which ‘has dominated sexuality studies’ since ‘the post-civil rights era’ in the Global North (Puar xiv). There has been a trend in queer theory, initiated by Jasbir Puar’s work on homonationalism, critiquing this political turn in queer theory. Puar sums up this pragmatism as ‘a fatigued debate about the advances and merits of civil legitimation – legalization of sodomy, gay marriage, and gay adoption’ (Ibid xiv). In her critique, Puar argues that, in fact, ‘homosexual desires’ and their reorientation towards these forms of queerness that are acceptable to the nation – monogamous family units endorsed by marriage, for example – ‘are foundational to the project of nationalism, as is the strict policing of the homo-hetero binary’ (Ibid 49). Thus, she argues, ‘nations are heteronormative because of, rather than despite, homosexuality’ (Ibid). To put it succinctly, homonationalism, the folding into the nation of certain forms of queer identity, is therefore a normative project. Queerness, in this sense ‘operates as a regulatory script not only of normative gayness, queerness, or homosexuality, but also of the racial and national norms that reinforce these sexual subjects’ (Ibid 2). This folding-into-the nation of queer subjects, however, should be understood as ‘a biopolitical project’ and hence a normalising into nationhood that produces a set of discriminations (Ibid 22). For Puar, the ‘emergence and sanctioning of queer subjecthood is a historical shift condoned only through a parallel process of demarcation from populations targeted for segregation, disposal, or death, a reintensification of racialization through queerness’ (Ibid xii). Indeed, she argues that ‘[h]omonormativity can be read as a formation complicit with and invited into the biopolitical valorization of life in its inhabitation and reproduction of heteronormative norms’ (Ibid 9). This counterstrand of queer theory has led me to consider how these Moroccan and South African novels and their focus on the ethics of group sex, and the meaning of democratic sexual citizenship, can be productive WI SH WE WE RE QUE E R 10 for exactly the kinds of alternative projects proposed by theorists like Puar, which will move us beyond homonormative pragmatism. Muñoz suggests that one way to overcome the stifling pragmatism of contemporary queer politics, and perhaps we can add postcolonial politics too, is to take a ‘posterior glance at different moments, objects, and spaces [that] might offer us an anticipatory illumination of queerness’ (Ibid). In doing so, in stepping back to look forward, and in imagining future queer utopias, the texts I have chosen illuminate an alternative to the pragmatic preoccupation with the political present that dominates much contemporary African scholarship on sexuality as well. This search for queer utopias – each of which are individual rather than monolithic – also disorientates the impulse to calcify diverse African sexualities in historically contingent categories of identity, advocating instead for forms of being/becoming that resist neat categorisation. These particular African texts articulate the possibility of stepping outside of the normative, of bending and twisting time, in such ways as to produce entirely novel ways of conceiving of normative conventions and categories – of gender, sexuality and especially temporality – effectively queering the schemes of intelligibility that construct temporality while creating new spaces for queer existence, or queer utopias. In this way, queer figures in African literatures speak back to queer and postcolonial theory, developing and extending its theorising of time and politics. One of the ways that these texts formulate new ways to think about time is in their investment in moments of group and/or public sex, which I argue constitutes a mode of undercommons belonging. In The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013), Moten and Harney unravel the idea of the undercommons as an organic collectivity at the margins of academia, although it is a notion that can be extended and applied to all who occupy the margins of society more broadly. ‘Undercommons’ as a critical term describes the radical and utopian possibility of community formations outside of social norms; it is the potential for alliances amongst outsiders of various stripes. As Halberstam describes in the introduction to their book, the undercommons can be ‘black people, indigenous peoples, queers and poor people (“Wild Beyond” 6). It includes those who ‘cannot be satisfied with the recognition and acknowledgement generated by the very system that denies a) that anything was ever broken and b) that we deserved to be the broken part’ (Ibid). The undercommons is thus a ‘call to dis-order and this disorder or wildness shows up in many places’ (Ibid 7). Hence, the undercommons articulates a certain desire ‘to take apart, dismantle, tear down the structure that, right now, limits our ability to find each other, to see beyond it and to access the places that we know lie outside its walls’ (Ibid 6). Inherent in the desire to ‘rely on the undercommons for protection’, Moten and Harney argue, is a kind of ‘fugitive impulse’ (40). The undercommons itself can thus be thought of as a ‘fugitive community’ (Ibid) that for Halberstam is ‘mostly about reaching out to find connection; they are about making common cause with the brokenness of being’ (“Wild Beyond” 5). This notion of the undercommons aligns well with the intention of queer theory and activism, and certain forms of feminism, that attempt to ‘dismantle’ the binarisms of heteropatriarchy, to ‘take apart’ the ways that heteronormativity structure our lives and living. Thus, queer theory can be one of the “wild places” where the undercommons shows up. Moten and Harney are also insistent that, rather than define the undercommons as belonging to the university 11 INTRODUCTION alone, ‘the concepts are ways to develop a mode of living together, a mode of being together that cannot be shared as a model but as an instance’ (105). For Moten and Harney, therefore, it is more important that the concept be ‘put in play’ in different circumstances and for different ideas and outcomes (Ibid 106).

Sociologists of race have argued that the dominant “social contract” of society can be contextualized within the notion of a Black/white binary (). Their analysis of racism and racial oppression and inequality has largely examined Black people in relation to whites. This racial paradigm has been widely critiqued for how it invisiblizes other racial and ethnic groups, such as Latinos/Latinas and Asian Americans. For example, legal scholar Juan Perea () observes that binary thinking excludes the histories and experiences of Latinx peoples and works to sustain negative stereotypes. Perea points out that a focus on Black and white negates the ways that other groups have experienced racism in America. Further, he defines the Black/white binary as “the conception that race in America consists, either exclusively or primarily, of only two constituent racial groups, the Black and the White” (p. 1219). Additionally, education scholars have warned against binary thinking as it relates to schools. Howard () identifies problems with the Black/white binary, which has overtaken the analysis of various types of racism that impact school experiences. He explains that educational equity “cannot be fully understood in only Black and White terms.” Criticisms of the Black/white binary follow at least three themes. The first theme suggests that the binary is an overly simplistic, one-dimensional analysis of race. Second, scholars argue that the Black/white binary links racism exclusively to skin color and denies the structural aspects of racism. Finally, another set of criticisms recognize how binary thinking on race misrepresents history while also obscuring the experiences of non-Black people of color. Further the Black/white binary does not account for how Latinos/as, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Native, and other racialized groups practice discrimination. It is the latter theme that has most utility for this article. Afro-Pessimism is less interested in the Black/white binary, per se, but rather a Black/non-Black divide. They suggest that all non-Blacks can have antagonisms against Black people. Instead of regarding race-based systems as primarily and solely an extension of white supremacy, Afro-Pessimism contends that anti-Blackness is upheld by its own set of logics that intersects with white supremacy, but is also operates separately in service to the dehumanization of Blacks. Lipsitz’s notions of the Black spatial imaginary and the white spatial imaginary does not fully account for the centrality and specificity of anti-Blackness. The white spatial imaginary does not explicitly explicate how non-Blacks and non-whites come to make sense of space and how those spatial logics work to subject and dehumanize Black people. The experience of slavery and its afterlives give Blacks a particular ontological position—that is, a grammar of suffering that has no analogy to any event endured by other racial groups. Thus, the plight of Black people cannot and should not be understood through a Black/white paradigm. (; ). Instead, what is needed is a specific spatial imaginary that centers on the specificity of anti-Blackness. Given the significance of anti-Blackness in the U.S., as a separate but related form of racism, attention to anti-Blackness is a critical component in unmasking how spatial imaginaries function as an unspoken grammar in society. Anti-Blackness is spatialized in bodies, buildings, memories, minds, and social ecologies that extirpate the potential of Black people to reach full humanity and thus be consigned to “a paradigmatic impossibility” (p. 9), as  posits. As a spatial imaginary, anti-Blackness is circulated through discourses, images, and texts that tell a story of Blackness as a problem, non-human, and placeless. Subsequently, the stories materialize into geographies and spatial practices that people act in relation to, and through, this spatial imaginary. These practices work to reify the imaginary. The anti-Black spatial imaginary promotes policies and practices that structure the social death of Black individuals and groups. It produces the destruction of social identity and social networks through modes of displacement, exclusion and estrangement. It endorses natal alienation—the disassociation of community, kinship, and familial bonds. The anti-Black spatial imaginary inflicts gratuitous and wanton spatial violence upon Black people’s flesh, spirit, and psyche. It attacks, wounds, and breaks the connections that bind Black populations together. Black communities witness their neighborhoods, schools, and classrooms dislodged from their places as anchors in Black communities. The anti-Black spatial imaginary marks Black bodies as undesirable and therefore extractable from spaces and places that have been envisioned for their exclusion. The careless removal, displacement, and dispossession of Black bodies is anchored in spatialized anti-Blackness; it is anchored by the assumption that Black populations are spatially illegitimate and, moreover, part of a larger anti-Black project to exterminate Afrocultural traditions, values, and ways of being and celebrating Blackness. The visible presence of Blackness and Black people is seen by non-Blacks as a credible threat poised to unsettle normative and “pure” white spaces (). As the dominant social warrant of society, the anti-Black spatial imaginary views Blacks as captives, unfree subjects lodged in the nowheres of Black life. Anti-Blackness remains a powerful way of reading and interpreting the painful relationship of the Black condition within a context of disregard, disdain, and dismissal of Black people, particularly within environments that champion colorblind and anti-racist discourses. The architecture of education policy has “spatialized Blackness” by restricting movement and constructing Black bodies as needing to be surveilled, monitored, and policed. The anti-Black spatial imaginary is riddled with fear and presupposes that Black people are aspatial. Spatial imaginaries are effective vehicles for the transmission of social anxieties and/or hopes about the future. In conceptualizing an anti-Black spatial imaginary, it is not my intention to provide an articulation that is inflexible or intractable. Spatial imaginaries are not secure or unwavering. We produce narratives and ideas about spaces, and we produce their embedded meanings. Instead, I consider the spatiality of anti-Blackness not as a clearly demarcated thing or a unified imaginary of causes and consequences, but as a pliable framework that explores the violent conditions that seek to debilitate the persistence of Black people.

It also throws us into a conceptual crisis because the violence directed against the “Gay Nigger #1” is inconceivable and inarticulate within Afro-pessimistic logics (although the violence against the “Nigger” at least has a gram-mar under the sign “antiblack”). Put differently, we lose something (whatever this something “is”) under the banner “fungibility” when the particular violence that Steen, and others structured similarly, experienced is broadly characterized as antiblackness. How do we then understand the “Gay Nigger #1” philosophically and theoretically within Afro- pessimistic discourse? Are antiblack violence and antiqueer violence indissociable? And if they are indissociable, why are some black commodities the targets of “anti- gay” violence and other black commodities are not? If antiblack violence serves as the unifying ground of fungible commodities, then differentiating violence might just fracture this commodity, such that it is interchangeable on one register (antiblackness) but not on another. The problem space that opens this article circulates around these inquiries as it concerns the “Gay Nigger #1.” In essence, this problem space is nothing more than the double bind of humanism that lingers despite our investment in invalidating and disarming it. To avoid the “structural adjustment” that many scholars rely on to incorporate blacks into the fold of humanism and its liberal narratives, Afro-pessimists have rejected, to the extent that we can reject, this humanism and its structural adjustment. In the vacuous space of undifferentiation, differences such as “gender,” “sexuality,” “ability,” and so forth are also rejected because they belong to the human and not the fungible commodity. But this rejection leaves us without a way to understand the particularities of violence and the way this particular violence constitutes ontology. Thus, the “black gay,” the black lesbian, and the “black heterosexual” object might bond over the pulverizing technologies of antiblack violence, but fracture around antiqueer violence. We lack a procedure to theorize this fracturing outside humanism. But, again, I am writing gay, lesbian, and heterosexual under erasure here to docket the double bind that this inquiry presents. Without the differentiating grammar of humanism, we are unable to talk about the fracturing between fungible commodities that renders some the targets of certain violence and others not. Afro-pessimism becomes uncomfortably silent when confronted with issues of sexism experienced by black women and antiqueer violence experienced by black gays or lesbians, for example, to avoid the performative contradiction. The assumption that antiblack violence will offer a theoretical/philosophical covering for these beings neglects the particularities of the violence experienced and the particularities of the fungible commodity that becomes the target of specific violence. If fungibility creates a blob of black commodities, certain sociopolitical violence cuts this blob into unthinkable parts—parts that we have yet to name or provide a sufficient grammar to describe. I would argue that this fracturing is significant if we take Wilderson’s (2010) argument seriously that “violence is a matrix of (im)possibility, a paradigm for ontology” because it speaks to the way that the fungible commodity is constituted through different procedures of violence, which cannot be easily subsumed under the banner “antiblackness.” But scholars have attempted to reconcile blackness with sexual difference and sexual identity through logics of equivalence. This scholarship operates under what I call “the intersectional approach.” Although this approach provides intellectual space for contemplating and representing sexual difference and sexual identity, it often does so precisely by way of a structural adjustment. Thus it enacts a performative contradiction (between blackness and humanism) that it either ignores or neglects.

6. Abstraction as a mode of resistance to visibility is not limited to queer perspectives. Intersectional accounts of abstraction and visibility are necessary and expansive. There have been artists working from many different marginalized positions who have used abstraction as a mode of resistance to visibility, scrutiny, and surveillance or who have utilized it as a means of worlding, of poiesis, or of futurity. These are articulated in response to the daily experience of others’ categorizing gazes and to the persistent cultural marking that any representation of the human form calls forth from viewers. Such employments of abstraction gain their political and affective resonances because they are drawn from the anger, exhaustion, and facility that come with navigating the ways in which “marked” positions of difference are opposed to (and defining of) a supposedly unmarked “neutral.” Of course, any unmarked position only gains its contours by policing boundaries of difference, and power is dispensed across these borders between the “normal” and the “other.” We know well these unmarked positions that attempt to mask themselves as somehow natural; among the most insidious are Whiteness, heteronormativity, ability, and the doctrine that genders are binary and static. Abstraction’s resistant capacity can be used against this hegemonic positing of the invisibility of normativity and the visibility of difference. In thinking about the wide range of deployments of non-representation and afiguration, it is the power-laden relationship to visibility that is the key variable. For instance, there are long and complex histories of Black artists who have used abstraction in relation to the virulent force of racism, whether to call out its workings or to circumvent the speed with which race becomes a primary factor in the visual categorization of persons.22 These and other invested ways of using abstraction should be understood in relation (and, at times, precedent) to those practices that seek to render or allegorize how queer persons suffer under and attempt escape from normative categorizations. Respect the different ways in which surveillance is endured. But of course, marked positions also imbricate and intersect, and many people live at the margins of multiple identities. Sometimes, this intersectionality is addressed head-on by artists or writers and, at other times, there is a usefulness in focusing on one aspect of identity or on only some of them. Many individuals pivot (sometimes hourly) between the positions they inhabit in a system of cultural marking and categorization. They deploy an array of survival tactics in order to navigate visual taxonomies, surveillance, and compulsory visibility.23 An understanding of the differences between these positionalities (and the categories they navigate) is a precursor to a more complex intersectional analysis of their connectedness. Abstraction as a visual strategy is particularly useful as a means of discussing questions of difference, intersectionality, and power because it asks the linked questions “What is visible?” and “What are you looking for?” These questions, simply put, mean differently when asked from or of positions of cultural difference 70 such as queerness, Blackness, gender non-conforming, differently abled, and intersections thereof. These questions generate multiple, interdependent answers that unfold into contention and connection.24 The conversation about how these questions are confronted across different positions, identities, and intersections can be the basis for alliances, for a productive skepticism about those alliances, for synergies, and for more wide-ranging critical resistance. Indeed, abstraction’s openness might be generative of surprising ways to visualizing such intersections, solidarities, and critiques.

We know that, just by existing, historically subordinated populations are deemed inconvenient to the privileged who made them so; the subordinated who are cast as a problem experience themselves as both necessary for and inconvenient to the general supremacist happiness. All politics involves at least one group becoming inconvenient to the reproduction of power; that power might be material or fantasmatic, in the convoluted paranoid way endemic to the intimacy of enemies. The biopolitical politics of inconvenience increases the ordinary pressure of getting in each other’s way, magnifying the shaping duration of social friction within the mind’s echo chambers and the structuring dynamics of the world. As an affect, inconvenience can thus encompass all kinds of intensity but still be cast as a mode of impersonal contact that has an impact, opening itself to becoming personal, creating images of what feels like a looming social totality, and making a countervailing social organization imaginable. Think about Cheryl Harris’s staging of Blackness as “trespassing” on white consciousness as it strolls and scrolls through the world expecting not to feel impeded; think of the pervasive sexual violence women imagine concretely when they’re walking somewhere alone.7 These sensations of threat are ordinary to the people moving through in the lifeworlds of a supremacist society and its entitlement hierarchies.8 They can confirm or disconfirm the erotophobia or specific mistrust we have been schooled to live with. The expectation of inconvenience can pull you into a zone where the impersonal opens to genres of viscerally strong yet abstract encounter. It can be an effect of speculation prior to movement that creates hypervigilance, tableaux Introduction 5 or scenarios in prefigurative response to potential encounters. It can get people talking to each other about how to change what’s deemed structural, even when the only evidence is a sense of things that permeates the social field and is central to the reproduction of its norms of concentrated value. But the threat posed by politicized inconvenience doesn’t have to be immediately theatrical or traumatic: a sense of apprehension can arise in any moment, seemingly happening and passing as an irritation. One never knows about effects until this kind of contact becomes materialized in a series. The inconveniences of managing one’s own putative inconvenience to the sense of freedom demanded by the structurally dominant is a completely predictable experience, both draining and animating, in intimate and political settings. It forces a constant reassessment of what kinds of impact constitute an event. In this book, “inconvenience” draws a membrane across radically private experiences of world-receptivity at the periphery of attention and anything people have to face every day—an ongoing labor situation, a family, a politicized infrastructure they may have been born into, the population they’ve been assigned to, or other people’s projected fantasies.9 When is a body an event because of the kind of thing it is deemed to be, as when they walk into a room or cross a state line? What price and what kinds of price are being paid in order to live a life as other people’s inconvenient object? These questions tap into the ordinary of biopower at the same time as they tap into the encounter with being as such. However dramatic the situation of power, it is at its most powerful when it is distributed across the structural, the casual, and the shadowy, as Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, Achille Mbembe, and Jasbir Puar have documented in their work on necropolitical protocols of the state and related apparatuses.10 As Puar argues, to maim rather than kill in order to maintain political power is to enjoy enforcing the ongoing theater of the inconvenience of certain other people. But it’s not just bullets that disable living. It’s inconvenient to bear the burden of a naming you didn’t ask for: there is no getting beyond it, only dealing with it as a form of life you live with. To a structurally and/or fantasmatically dominant class, though, the experience of inconvenience produces dramas of unfairness. Take, for example, the paranoid reversals of “incels” and other entitled persons who experience their vulnerability as an injury of unjustly denied deference.11 It is predictable that the structurally dominant feel vulnerable about their status and insist that if the historically subordinated deserve repair, so do the entitled. It is as though there is a democracy in vulnerability, as though the details do not matter. From both perspectives, the exhaustion from incessant abrasive contact can produce numbed or intense self-subtraction and the elaboration of massive rage. At whatever intensity or scale, then, in whatever scenario of power, the sense of the inconvenience of other people in general, and often some other particular kinds of people, is constantly being renewed and reevaluated. Mainly the hit of it surfaces and dives in the ordinary life of being in the world, shifting atmospheres and coordinating stresses without much being memorable. But the ordinary includes the casual reproduction of hatreds and aversions, creating subjectivities powerfully shaped by navigating its entailments, excitements, and tolls.

Wynter notes that Columbus is often positioned in terms of celebratory American “discovery” in ways that brush over the colonial, nationalistic, and imperialistic implications of his individual financial aspirations and the objectification of black bodies on which those aspirations depended. Walter Mignolo follows Wynter, providing some insight into the racial foundations of homo economicus, particularly connecting it to Western colonialism and imperialism, both of which are inseparable from the post-Columbian context.68 Mignolo argues that the self-interested optimization that fleshes out the figure of homo economicus assumes coloniality and imperialism.69 In effect, Western colonial enrichment—at the expense of indigenous racial others of Europe—is already inherent in the “economic rationality” of homo economicus, as it is seen as a financially rational tool of enrichment, rather than a moral wrong. Elsewhere Wynter claims that the proto-notion of homo economicus that circulated in the sixteenth century underwent important transformations by the nineteenth century. Further removed from Judeo-Christianity, conceptions of economic rationality in the nineteenth century functioned in raced form to articulate both black and indigenous populations in the “New World” as the epitome of economic irrationality. Wynter notes that by the nineteenth century, the black slave “would now be made into the physical referent of the ostensibly most racially inferior and non-evolved Other to Man, itself redefined as optimally homo economicus.”70 The black slave is in effect the defining opposite of homo economicus, that nonbeing who is less than human and/ or not human at all. Where homo economicus is self-interested and free to choose—the subject who can fulfill the ultimate human goal of surplus accumulation on his own—the slave is utterly removed from not only this goal but even the possibility of choosing or acting within the construct of the self. W. E. B. Du Bois suggested the white worker’s choice and the black slave’s absence of choice were important components of the capitalistic distinction between blackness and whiteness. Du Bois argued white workers always held out hope that “they themselves might also become planters by saving money, by investment, by the power of good luck.”71 Black slaves come into existence not as exploited, which is to say “free” to sell their labor (choice), but expropriated in ways that mirror the extraction of natural resources.72 Another way to say this is that the slave, much like the tree or cattle, for Frank Wilderson,73 is Financial Literacy and Black Economic Life | 981 the ground on which human capitalist exploitation stands. Julia Ott’s comprehensive review of research on slave capital bears this out: the transatlantic slave trade and slave-based Southern US commodity production created modern capitalism, financing transformations in technology, industry, and economy more thoroughly than any other capital input.74 Ian Baucom explains the connection between the objecthood of black slave bodies and the economic rationality of finance.75 According to Baucom, it was the transatlantic slave trade that birthed the modern financial calculation of value through insurance on slaves. The value of slave bodies as chattel, which could, if circumstances demanded, be cast overboard from a slave ship facing turbulent seas, was guaranteed in advance for the owners of slave ships by insurance policies. The calculation of the cost of that insurance was a foundational form of what Baucom variously terms “actuarial historicism” or “theoretical realism,” which are forms of rationality that “ground value in the loss of the singular and the invention of the average.”76 In other words, insurance on slave bodies evacuated their singularity more completely even than enslavement, rendering them placeholders of value, which could be converted into paper money either through exchange or through the exercise of an insurance contract once they were cast overboard. For Baucom, the modern credit economy and finance capitalism itself are founded on the reification of speculative values that the insured transatlantic trade in black slaves inaugurated. In his formulation, it is the white slave trader or actuary who can see through the “thingliness” of the objects of slavery to calculate their speculative value, embodying the “speculative culture of finance capital” that has much in common with the economic rationality invoked in the calculation of the abstract cost of “free” checking accounts, despite their very real lived costs for poor customers.77 These dynamics did not end with slavery. The twentieth century is rich with examples of outerdetermined black objecthood within capitalism.78 The 1939 Federal Housing Authority Underwriting Manual that served as both guide and tool for suburbanization in the US not only ratified the practice of “redlining” whereby neighborhoods of black families were drawn out of mortgage lending, but actually directed homeowners to use racial covenants to prevent black people from moving into their neighborhoods.79 Both redlining and racial covenants acted on black homeowners and potential buyers, making them objects to be circumscribed and excluded. They also prevented black people from becoming privileged subjects of the American mortgage boom, which was built and protected for those consumers who fit within the racialized subject position of homo economicus.