U9 - Moral Wounds and Racial Phantoms: Psychoanalysis, War Trauma, and American Racial History

Course Title: Moral Wounds and Racial Phantoms: Psychoanalysis, War Trauma, and American Racial History

Instructor:

Dr. Eric W. Anders, Ph.D., Psy.D.Email: [your email]Office Hours: [your office hours]

Course Description:

This course explores the psychological, social, and historical dimensions of war trauma in the American context, focusing on moral injury, unconscious racial hauntings, and the legacy of colonial violence. Using psychoanalysis as a lens, we will examine how war trauma interacts with racial history, particularly in relation to the spectral presence of slavery and genocide in the American psyche.

Beginning with Freud’s theory of trauma and the return of the repressed, we will analyze how moral wounds—injuries to the soul arising from participation in or exposure to acts of violence—manifest in both individual and collective American life. We will discuss how race operates as a structuring absence, shaping the psychic experience of war and its aftermath.

By integrating psychoanalytic theory, historical case studies, literature, film, and clinical narratives, this course will critically interrogate the ways American soldiers, veterans, and civilians experience and process war. From the Civil War to contemporary conflicts in the Middle East, we will investigate the role of repression, melancholia, and disavowal in shaping national identity. Special attention will be given to the Vietnam War and its aftermath, where race and war trauma collide in particularly stark ways.

Course Objectives:

By the end of the course, students will:

Understand key psychoanalytic concepts related to trauma, including repression, melancholia, and disavowal.
Analyze the concept of moral injury and its impact on soldiers and society.
Critically engage with historical and contemporary case studies of American war trauma.
Explore the racial dimensions of war trauma, particularly the unconscious legacy of slavery and colonialism.
Apply psychoanalytic and interdisciplinary perspectives to literature, film, and historical texts.
Develop skills in critical writing and discussion on psychoanalysis, war, and race.

Course Structure & Weekly Topics

Unit I: Theoretical Foundations—Psychoanalysis and Trauma Studies

Week 1: Introduction to the Course: War, Trauma, and Race in the American PsycheReadings:

Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Selections)
Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience (Introduction)
Excerpts from Moral Wounds and Racial Phantoms (Anders)

Week 2: The Return of the Repressed: War and the UnconsciousReadings:

Freud, Mourning and Melancholia
Abraham & Torok, The Shell and the Kernel (Selections)
Derrida, Specters of Marx (Selections)

Week 3: Moral Injury and the Unconscious Legacy of ViolenceReadings:

Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam (Chapters 1-3)
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (Chapters on trauma and colonialism)
Excerpts from Moral Wounds and Racial Phantoms (Anders)

Unit II: Historical Case Studies—The Racial Ghosts of American Wars

Week 4: The Civil War and the Unresolved Specter of SlaveryReadings:

Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering (Selections)
Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother (Chapter on racial melancholia)
Excerpts from Lincoln’s speeches on slavery and war

Week 5: The Vietnam War—Race, Trauma, and American Imperial MelancholyReadings:

Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Christian Appy, Working-Class War (Selections)
Paul Gilroy, Postcolonial Melancholia (Selections)

Film Screening: Apocalypse Now (1979)

Week 6: The War on Terror and the New Racial PhantomsReadings:

Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score (Chapters on PTSD)
Judith Butler, Frames of War (Selections)
Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim (Selections)

Film Screening: The Hurt Locker (2008)

Unit III: Psychoanalytic Readings of Literature, Film, and Art

Week 7: The Haunted Soldier in LiteratureReadings:

Toni Morrison, Beloved (Trauma and War)
Pat Barker, Regeneration (WWI Trauma and Therapy)
Cathy Caruth, Literature in the Ashes of History (Selections)

Week 8: Ghosts, Repetition, and the National UnconsciousReadings:

Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject (Selections)
Jacques Lacan, Ecrits (Selections on trauma and repetition)
Excerpts from Moral Wounds and Racial Phantoms (Anders)

Week 9: Film as a Medium of War TraumaReadings:

Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (Selections)
Film: Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Unit IV: Contemporary Interventions—Psychoanalysis and Healing

Week 10: Psychoanalysis and Veterans TodayReadings:

Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Chapters on trauma and listening)
Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History
Case studies from contemporary psychoanalytic practice

Week 11: Racial Reckonings—Trauma and ReparationsReadings:

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations
Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
Derrida, On Forgiveness (Selections)

Week 12: Conclusion—How Do We Heal from National Trauma?Final discussion and student presentations on case studies of war trauma and race.

Assignments & Grading

Weekly Reflections (20%) – Short response papers on readings.
Midterm Essay (25%) – A 5-7 page critical analysis of a case study.
Film Analysis (20%) – A psychoanalytic reading of a war film.
Final Project (35%) – Research paper or creative project engaging with course themes.

Key Questions to Consider Throughout the Course:

How does psychoanalysis help us understand war trauma beyond traditional PTSD frameworks?
In what ways does racial history haunt American soldiers and civilians?
How do literature and film serve as media for reckoning with the unconscious?
Can nations, like individuals, suffer from repression and melancholia?
What does moral injury reveal about the psychic life of American militarism?

Conclusion:

This course provides an in-depth investigation into the intersection of war trauma, psychoanalysis, and racial history in the U.S. By engaging critically with literature, history, and psychoanalytic theory, students will develop a nuanced understanding of how war wounds not just the body but the national psyche, and how racial phantoms continue to shape American identity.