The Racist Fantasy Quotes

“Not only does the immigrant perform work that citizens will not perform for a wage that they will not accept, according to the racist fantasy, the immigrant does so without acceding to the rules that govern the social order. The immigrant as an immigrant has the status of one who doesn’t belong to the social order. The social restrictions that apply to citizens don’t apply to immigrants, who have no clear place within the social order. Although being undocumented seems to carry nothing but disadvantages, from the perspective of the racist fantasy, it signifies the clear advantage of benefiting from the social order without being subjected to its laws. Undocumented immigrants have a much greater fantasmatic power due to their lack of documentation, which indicates how the law fails to sink its teeth into them.

The more that immigrants become marginalized and fall outside the social order—the more they exist in an oppressed situation—the more they appear to partake in the enjoyment that the racist fantasy attributes to them. Far from eliminating their access to enjoyment, their oppressed status signifies their access to it in the racist fantasy.”
― Todd McGowan, The Racist Fantasy: Unconscious Roots of Hatred

“The fundamental task of fantasy is to transform an impossible satisfaction that no one could attain into a prohibited satisfaction that becomes unattainable due to the fantasized obstacle that prevents the subject from having its object. Fantasy plays the central role in the psyche because it performs this operation. Even though fantasy is primarily unconscious, it enables people to believe consciously in the possibility of a satisfaction that they cannot have. It allows them to come into touch with a transcendent impossibility that makes everyday life bearable. Through fantasy, one can imagine an enjoyment without lack, but this is possible only via the creation of an obstacle that bears responsibility for the failure to attain this enjoyment. This process enables one to enjoy the obstacle while believing oneself to be enjoying the prospect of having the desired object itself.”
― Todd McGowan, The Racist Fantasy: Unconscious Roots of Hatred