The individual,racism and transformation: a psychoanalytic case

This paper engages transformation processes by focusing on the racism that characterised pre‐1994 South Africa. Through analysis of an individual life‐history, it argues that individuals engage with contexts of racism in ways that are particular to their intrapersonal and intrapsychic processes. Foregrounding these, the paper argues for the legitimacy of the individual as a site of intervention in transformation processes, and posits that transformation processes that do not account for intrapersonal and intrapsychic dynamics are compromised at best and futile at worst.