David Morgan - A Deeper Cut: Further Explorations of the Unconscious in Social and Political Life

A Deeper Cut

The Political Mind Series
edited by David Morgan

The Unconscious in Social and Political Life (2019)

A Deeper Cut

Further Explorations of the Unconscious in Social and Political Life

Edited by

David Morgan

First published in 2021 by

Phoenix Publishing House Ltd

62 Bucknell Road

Bicester

Oxfordshire OX26 2DS

Copyright 2021 to David Morgan for the edited collection, and to the individual authors for their contributions.

The rights of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-13: 978-1-912691-19-7

Typeset by Medlar Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd, India

www.firingthemind.com

Tell Them

Tell them (they have names)

and when they turn the bodies over

to count the number of closed eyes.

And they tell you 800,000: you say no. That was my uncle.

He wore bright coloured shirts and pointy shoes.

2 million: you say no. That was my aunty.

Her laughter could sweep you up like

the wind to leaves on the ground.

6 million: you say no. That was my mother.

Her arms. The only place I have ever

not known fear.

3 million: you say no. that was my love.

We used to dance. Oh, how we used to dance.

Or 147: you say no. that was our hope. Our future. The brains of the family.

And when they tell you that you come from war: you say no. I come from hands held in prayer before we eat together.

When they tell you that you come from conflict: you say no. I come from sweat.

On skin. Glistening. From shining sun.

When they tell you that you come from genocide: you say no. I come from the first smile of a new born child. Tiny hands.

When they tell you that you come from rape: you say no. And you tell them about every time you have ever loved.

Tell them that you are from mother carrying you on her back. Until you could walk.

Until you could run. Until you could fly.

Tell them that you are from father holding you up to the night sky.

Full of stars. And saying look, child. This is what you are made of.
From long summers. Full moons. Flowing rivers. Sand dunes.

You tell them that you are an ocean that no cup could ever hold.

JJ Bola
Poet

To exist is the artists greatest pride. He desires no other paradise than existence, love the existence of the thing more than yourself

Osip Mandelstam
The Morning of Acmeism

Contents

Acknowledgements

This is the second book that has developed out of the Political Mind Seminars at the British Psychoanalytical Society. Since the last book we have all been plunged into a catastrophe, in the form of a global pandemic.