SOCIAL DIAGNOSES OF WHITENESS

This paper presents some consequences of choosing diagnostic categories for reflecting on whiteness in Brazil. The use of psychoanalysis in the debate on ethnic-racial relations postulates a convergence between subjective constitution and social structure, and it is problematized considering the ethics of listening and an epistemologically non-colonizing position towards other knowledge systems. Historical and conceptual antecedents of the notion of whiteness and the specificities of the so-called "narcissistic pact," proposed by Cida Bento, are presented. By differentiating it from racism conceived as the "Brazilian cultural neurosis" in Lelia Gonzalez, we seek to draw political implications from the parallel between clinical treatment and social transformation horizons. It is argued that the emergence of a quilombola historical truth through the reconquest of the past is one of the conditions for an anti-racist future.