Beneficiaries For Evermore: Reply to Commentaries

Abstract

In replying to the thoughtful commentaries of Moosa and Orange, I engage with a number of questions they raise. These include the issue of good versus bad nostalgia as Moosa makes a distinction between nostalgia and perverse nostalgia. Moosa indicates how we internalize oppressive systems, and how language may unconsciously reflect this internalization. I agree and go beyond this to indicate how Moosa's and my personal histories may intertwine in our own internalization of an oppressive system in which we occupied different positions. Moosa occupied the position of victim/survivor, while I occupied the position of beneficiary/bystander/perpetrator. Orange speaks of the importance of these different positions in the experience of shame. I agree with Orange and discuss the implications of these positions for the experience of nostalgia. I dialogue with Orange concerning the relationship between guilt and shame, and the relationship between dissociation and the evasion of responsibility. In doing so, I join Orange in developing a psychoanalytic account of how pre-dissociative children come to accept racism and other oppressive systems.