Hypatia

In Healing Identities, Cynthia Burack brings together the tools of psychoanalysis and political theory with the theoretical work of modern Black feminism in order to shed light on the workings of groups. The six chapters in Healing Identities render difficult concepts in all three discourses accessible to readers who may be unfamiliar with psychoanalysis, political theory, or Black feminist thought. Burack believes that all three theoretical traditions have important things to say about developing the kinds of groups that will be adequate to social justice projects.

Chapters 1 and 2 explore the connections between psychoanalysis and political theory, in order to introduce the repressive nature of groups. They also survey how race and racism appear in both discourses. Chapter 3, titled "Reparative Group Leadership" is in many ways the heart of Healing Identities. Burack introduces Black feminist thought, which she describes as both an academic and identity group discourse that is produced by Black women scholars for a primary audience of Black women. Burack perceives Black feminist scholars so defined as comparable to the leaders of other identity group discourses, and sees them as group leaders. Burack uses the term "reparative," which she suggests has a positive and healthy meaning within Black feminist thought. Burack [End Page 227] understands reparative groups to be those that "collectively work through issues that routinely plague groups without giving in to the worst, most destructive and unfortunately most common group possibilities" (59). When applied to groups, the term "reparation" suggests a group's ability to mend harms done or desired, possible or imagined to other groups. With psychoanalytic theory and Black feminist thought so defined, Burack proceeds to examine the differences between group psychoanalytic expectations associated with group leadership and the actual reparative group leadership of Black feminist thought.

Using Black feminist thought as a touchstone for analysis, chapters 4 and 5, titled "Conflict and Authenticity" and "Bonding and Solidarity," respectively, take up different dimensions of Burack's model of repressive and reparative leadership. Chapter 6, "Coalitions and Reparative Politics," explores the implications for mainstream scholarship of Black feminist thought's reparative leadership: "Black feminist theorizing about groups violates pessimistic expectations about group life that are widely held by social and political theorists. The reparativeness of Black feminist thought is most plainly revealed precisely by the dimension that is so often celebrated by scholars and commentators of Black feminism: coalition-building and coalition politics" (159).

Despite its good intentions, Healing Identities raised two sets questions for me. For one, there is the question of how Burack's intended audience affects the overall organization and arguments of this volume. Healing Identities does not seem designed for African American readers. Instead, this book appears to be written to appeal to White feminist readers who are engaged in debates about the merits of interpretive uses of psychoanalytic theory and of political theory for Western feminist projects, especially those that might build feminist coalitions. As the author points out, "black feminist thought . . . evokes emotion in many of its readers. I am convinced that, like much passion in political life, this emotion is defensive—an attempt to fend off guilt, self-examination, and genuine confrontation with otherness" (5). Just who exactly are the readers who would engage Black feminist thought as a site of otherness? Certainly not Black women. In a similar vein, the author's goal to "refine a set of theoretical uses of psychoanalysis for feminists and other interested in the social production of groups" (4) seems undermined by her parallel claim that "black feminists are more likely to bypass than to debate psychoanalytic explanations" (8). If this is the case, one might wonder why Black women who are so involved in building reparative groups would reject psychoanalytic frameworks.

Some Black women readers might see the treatment of healing and reparations in Healing Identities as violating the very spirit of Black feminist thought. Burack seems unaware of how the thesis of the damaged Black psyche renders her focus on healing suspicious. Healing...