From the Clinic to the Streets

'Lara Sheehi cultivates a radically activated recognition of the conditions of colonial war as a state of intimate endangerment. From here, the liberationist mandate to nurture psychic militancy is both a prerequisite and an ongoing practice of refusing the settler state’s genocidal normalcy. Read this book, absorb its implications, and prepare to determine what comes next'

-- Dylan Rodríguez, Distinguished Professor, University of California at Riverside

'Let's get right to it: upholding the split between the intrapsychic and sociopolitical reproduces the violence of power. As an antidote, read, embrace and enact the lessons of Lara Sheehi's testimony of radical love offered in service of transformation. Understand how her theorisation of psychic intrusion transforms into psychic militancy and how this enriches our armoury as we battle the relations of rule in these times of genocide, ongoing settler colonialism and techno-fascism.'

-- Gail Lewis, Visiting Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Yale University

'This astonishing, innovative and militant book seizes psychoanalysis and, with Fanonian urgency in times of genocide, puts it to work, for us instead of against us; Sheehi shows us how to radically repeat our resistance to power.'

-- Ian Parker, The Red Clinic and co-author of Psychoanalysis and Revolution

'What if no one sided with colonialism? Are you and your comrades equipped with the clarity required to truly hold the line? How can resistance fighters today prevail psychically against the confusion-mongers and despair-peddlers who dog them at every turn? In a moment queasily rife with counterinsurgent literary misappropriations of Fanonian psychoanalysis, this book embodies a despecialized psychoanalytic praxis of revolutionary anticolonialism that is genuinely worthy of the name 'Fanon.' Blazing with militant clarity, Lara Sheehi lays her finger directly on the myriad 'intrusions' designed to thwart, confuse, pacify, and derail internationalist resistance to imperial barbarism at the level of our very interiority. Here is a book that mounts the barricades, and compels us to wholeheartedly struggle, alongside its author, for real planetary liberation and a life worth living.'

-- Sophie Lewis, author of Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation

'Sheehi deftly illuminates the mechanics of psychological warfare and provides a political vocabulary, indeed a methodology for how we can protect our minds against intrusion of depraved colonial mythologies. An invaluable text for our times'

-- Orisanmi Burton, author of Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt

'Like the manuals that circulate amongst militants, teaching us how to build barricades, avoid teargas or hide IP addresses, this book treats psychoanalysis as a daily political practice of counter-repetition, a tool that can help us resist the colonization of the psyche by reactionary forces. An amazing book that takes us from the de-specialization of the practice, away from the elites, to its political reskilling'

-- Gabriel Tupinambá, psychoanalyst and author of The Desire of Psychoanalysis

'A waterfall of insurgent thinking, this book sets the direction in which revolutionary theorizing will be moving in the years to come. In resolute and deft moves, Sheehi’s willful text cuts open psychoanalytic shibboleths (repair, dialogue, politesse) so we can see for ourselves the counterinsurgencies innervating them. Her radical and unflinching investigation unbendingly centers Palestine to reveal how we are deskilled and psychically intruded, made to feel exhausted, fearful, confused, and despairing. But Sheehi also teaches us how psychoanalysis can re-skill us, arming us with a psychic militancy that can bring the seductions that Zionist, fascist, and colonial logics exert on us to a screeching halt. Sheehi writes for nothing less than to re-arrange the terms by which we relate to the world'

-- Avgi Saketopoulou, psychoanalyst, author of Sexuality Beyond Consent

'This is psychoanalysis reanimated by fierce love and an abolitionist spirit. Rather than turning away from the ways psychoanalysis has been used to stabilise and serve power, Sheehi carefully sets out this history as the ground from which liberatory work can emerge. Fiercely loving, historically grounded, and practical, this book offers intellectual and ethical companionship to practitioners, students, and educators seeking transformative futures. This is psychic militancy by example—in thought, language, and action. This book is a timely reminder that the question of what psychoanalysis is for is not only unsettled, but re-imaginable, and in our hands'

-- Foluke Taylor, author of Unruly Therapeutic: Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room