Ritwik Bhattacharjee

Using Canada as patient A,  my research uses a new theoretical
framework that psychoanalytically studies repressed historical trauma as the
quintessential element of the Freudian national Id. Together in tussle with
the Lacanian Other (modernity, in which the nation-state resides) Canada
exhibits dissociative discontinuities in the way it expresses itself through
the use of power. An example of such discontinuity is the TRC report, that
surreptitiously distances the government from past horrific errors and by
extension absolves it of any perpretation. The analysis also intends to
propose a new practical framework of political philosophy where the core of
such trauma is traced back to the Hegelian idea of the desire for
recognition. Thus a therapeutic policy towards building political
institutions based on the principle of recognition as a virtue will be shown
to provide the much-needed palliative measure that will help concile the past
with the present.