Darius Cret

My research project focuses on the role played by Western psychiatry in producing, sustaining, and reinforcing the systematic psychopathologisation of Black masculinity. Materialising as a synthesis between philosophy, the psychological sciences, and the interrogative paradigm of Black Male Studies, I argue that the white psychiatric establishment, through its operation within the (neo)colonial societal apparatus, has contributed to the epistemological reification of a particular kind of criminal insanity within the ontology of Black manhood.

Through a historiographic analysis grounded in both conceptual genealogy and empirical data, I uphold that the demonisation of the Black male psyche not only belongs to a broader continuum of dehumanising practices rendering justifiable the extermination of Black men under the genocidal logics of white supremacy, but also functions as a conceptual tool facilitating the interdisciplinary silencing and erasure of their dialectics of liberation within hegemonic academic discourse. I also contend that the racialised categorical associations between Black masculinity and insanity/criminality, unaddressed and uninterrogated under our contemporary configurations of cultural competency in clinical practice, continue to be redeployed towards the detriment of Black men and boys in mental healthcare settings.

By confronting the analytic dictums masquerading as theory which permeate the vast corpus of literature concerning the alleged (violent) psychological deviance of Black men, I seek to introduce a radical reconstruction of the historically-misinterpreted concept of ‘Black rage’ as a cogent reaction to colonial oppression and efficient psycho-affective catalyst of revolutionary struggle, adamantly rejecting the ‘protest psychosis’ theory formulated within the racialised paradigms of Western psychiatry.