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Drawing from liberation psychology as well as progressive traditions within psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic liberation psychology represents a paradigmatic approach to practice, one that moves away from regressive disciplinary orthodoxies and toward the flows of desire and emotion that characterize emancipatory political spaces. For psychoanalytic liberation psychology, the manner by which fantasy is engaged within anti‐capitalist movements remains, somewhat curiously, under‐considered. In this article, I reflect on my work with a South African social movement to flesh out some of the progressive and regressive valances of fantasy in the context of social movement building. Specifically, I consider how psychoanalytic liberation psychology may and may not be of use to anti‐capitalist resistance movement actors whose political activity is undergirded by a bricolage of fantasies, breakdowns in fantasy, and holding reality accountable to liberatory fantasies. I conclude by speculating what fantasy might mean for future psychoanalytic liberation psychology work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although research has demonstrated the ecological, public health and food security benefits of community gardens, few studies have considered community gardens in relation to a broader social solidarity economy (SSE), that is, inter-community networks wherein people develop commitments to building just and equitable economic alternatives. In employing a thematic analysis on triangulated data (collected via an interview, participant observation, and a participatory film), the present case study explores how a community gardener from a low-income South African community engages with his community's SSE. We analyse how this community garden fostered solidarity and established alternative micro-economic practices. We also consider the challenges facing community gardens when connecting with the SSE. By way of conclusion, we emphasise the importance of taking a critical, broad-based view of the SSE within research, and how case studies can assist us in understanding the various influences that SSE initiatives can have within and across communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The materialist conception of art understands art in relation to the material conditions within and by which art is produced and consumed. For cultural psychology, the materialist conception of art has been useful for developing insights into how individual perceptions are shaped, and are shaped by, culture as a collectively produced and historically embedded site of meaning-making. However, in much of cultural psychology, the relationship between progressive politics and the materialist conception of art remains under-appreciated. In this article, I consider how cultural psychologists might strengthen this relation through artistic shock, that is, a subjective, perceptual, and/or historiographical rupture brought about through the experience of art. In particular, I outline how Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin theorised and practiced artistic shock, and examine what the work of these thinkers could mean for cultural psychologists working with political collectives to grapple with psychopolitical questions related to subjectivity, contradiction, and memory. I conclude by reflecting on how future work that seeks to politicise cultural psychology might engage with the materialist conception of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term Anthropocene (Age of Human) implies that the reduction of carbon emissions is a matter of changing human behaviour. This risks depoliticising the climate emergency. Everyone is not equally responsible for climate change, and the consequences of climate change are not distributed equally. Climate change is overwhelmingly the result of extractive and exploitative capitalist production. It is thus more useful to understand the climate crisis in terms of the Capitalocene (Age of Capital), with climate justice being a terrain of anti-capitalist struggle. Mainstream responses to climate change have largely neglected the Capitalocene, focusing instead on consumer behaviour. This individualistic approach has been taken up by several ecologically oriented psychological professions, where the emphasis has been on 'responsible consumer behaviour' and/or the psychological effects of climate uncertainty. There is, however, a growing critical tradition within the psychological professions that seeks to advance climate justice by taking seriously the capitalist political economy. Indeed, psychological practitioners are equipped with skills that may be useful for activists involved in psychopolitical efforts to consolidate climate justice movements and build political power. We posit three key areas for psychological practitioners working for climate justice movements: solidarity-making, affective mediation, and resource mobilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To mark the 30th anniversary of the Psychological Society of South Africa (PsySSA), 11 of PsySSA’s past presidents, along with two facilitators, gathered in early 2024 for a roundtable discussion on psychology in South Africa. This article represents an edited transcript of that conversation. The guiding motif of the discussion – looking backwards, looking forwards – led discussants through the historical temporalities, institutional, professional and disciplinary debates, as well as the political concerns that face and have forged South African psychology. The discussants were specifically concerned with the challenges of unifying organised psychology; the generative forces, conflicts and antagonisms within psychology; psychology’s pedagogical and intellectual developments; and what it means to politicise psychology in and beyond South Africa. In looking ahead, the discussion concluded with an internationalist reflection on how psychology in South Africa contributes to global knowledges and praxes. The conversation was characterised by epistemic, sectoral and political tensions, as well as ambivalences and shifting centres of gravity, all of which reflect the accomplishments made within South African psychology, as well as psychology’s status as a strongly contested and patently unfinished organisational, disciplinary, professional, service and knowledge project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those working from within the liberation psychology paradigm strive to remould psychology so that it might be put to work for the task of liberation – a task with which most psychologists have, historically, been wholly unconcerned. In practice, liberation psychology tends to be porous, multiple, and under-resourced. Indeed, much of what we might think of as liberation psychology is not referred to as such by its practitioners. Surfacing liberation psychology, then, requires reading into its undocumented histories. In this article, we attempt to develop a picture of liberation psychology in South Africa (SA) by reading the archives of Mohamed Seedat, a pioneering practitioner of liberation psychology. Grounded in the working-class south of Johannesburg and underwritten by expansive global commitments to liberation, Seedat’s archive spans almost four decades, passing through many disciplines, communities, political traditions, and affective registers. We suggest that his archive offers us insights into the affective components of history, developing community praxis in apartheid and post-apartheid SA, and humanising knowledge-making. We conclude by reflecting on how liberation psychology archives like Seedat’s serve as under-appreciated resources for grappling with the psycho-political constitution of emancipatory struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]