Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism

Sigmund Freud infamously referred to womens sexuality as a dark continent for psychoanalysis, drawing on colonial explorer's Henry Morton Stanley's use of the same phrase to refer to Africa. While the problematic universalism of psychoanalysis led theorists to reject its relevance for postcolonial critique, Ranjana Khanna boldly shows how bringing psychoanalysis, colonialism, and women together can become the starting point of a postcolonial feminist theory.