Can the Clinical Subject Speak?

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the extent to which the clinical subject, in postcolonial clinical encounters, is able to speak, and be heard, through and beyond the structures of clinical theory and practice. The paper aligns itself theoretically with the project of Subaltern Studies, and particularly the work of Spivak, in her quest ‘to learn to speak to (rather than listen to or speak for) the historically muted subject of the subaltern woman’. It is concerned specifically with the complexity of learning to speak to the muted clinical subject of postcolonial Africa. It argues that this task is bedevilled by representations of Otherness (black, woman, illiterate, poor, rural) in clinical theory that speak for, but seldom engage in dialogue with, the clinical subject. Multivocal texts available in narrative therapy projects present an interesting challenge to conventional authorial ownership. More broadly, subaltern psychology, as a theoretical direction, offers an opportunity to understand ways in which muting occurs, and to work actively against professional deafness.