Colonization, complicity and resistance: A Fanonian discussion of the ‘Soldier Matrix’

Addressing concerns around positioning, (un)knowing, and action in relation to current geopolitical events, specifically the current Middle East context, this article offers some speculative analyses from my own perspective as a UK-based Jewish group analyst. Retracing the trajectory of my associative process, it considers sociocultural as well as individual defensive processes at play in remembering and responding to both past and current existential threats. I start by reflecting on French suppression of the memory of Vichy-Nazi occupation as seen in sublimated form within the writings of Holocaust survivor and author Georges Perec. Some disjunctions between Israeli Jewish and Diasporic Jewish identifications (both attributed and assumed) in relation to the Holocaust/Shoah are also considered. This traumatic history is set alongside Frantz Fanon’s account of the devastating impacts of racialization and colonial violence to reconsider both forms of resistance to, and resistance to knowing about, such violence. Group analytic discussions of ‘chosen trauma’ and the ‘soldier matrix’ are evaluated as analytical resources exploring subjective states enabling the current Israeli state genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The article concludes by addressing wider geopolitical responsibilities and positionings at play in maintaining—and hopefully ending—the current genocide, highlighting the urgent need to take up calls to ‘de-identify’ from national identities to counter settler colonial logics .