Freudian Slip

A “Freudian slip” is a mistake in speech or attitude that occurs due to the interference of an unconscious subjective desire, often something repressed. In recent decades, researchers working on what has been called “aversive racism” have offered interesting clues as to the possibility of verifying the existence of slips of the tongue and similar phenomena in their connection with a collective unconscious regarding racism. As this chapter demonstrates, it is possible to extend this a little further, to also encompass Eurocentrism and “colonial” prejudices. This chapter aims to demonstrate an embarrassing fact: even many European and US-American colleagues who consciously, sincerely, and explicitly see themselves as progressive or left-wing and support interpretations and causes related to the analyses of injustices and prejudices on various scale levels, often engage in culturally prejudiced and biased attitudes and feelings towards their colleagues based in countries on the periphery of global capitalism – prejudices and biases that are certainly anchored in a deep layer of ethnocentrism. Illustrating the abovementioned contradiction with examples, this chapter addresses two strands of environmental research widely recognised as socially critical/radical and even as decolonial: the interdisciplinary field of political ecology and the geographical current known as critical physical geography .