Where might I find you? Objects and internal space for the father

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between objects and their role in the recovering of the (my) father. Its distinguishing features include use of lived experience gleaned from memory in combination with cultural and post-Kleinian theory in an exploration of the internal space constituted by oedipal dynamics and domestic space inscribed as ‘multiracial’. Its mode is free associative, mirroring the act of remembering. It offers a distinctive contribution to the psychosocial, diaspora and memory literatures in its attempt to chart the simultaneous expansion of internal space and shrinking of ‘racial’ space that made room for a complicated, yet uncertain, psychic recognition of my father.