Language-Games: Race and Bewitchment (Report‪)‬

Introduction Having just attended a conference for psychotherapists on the subject of cultural identities, it occurred to me that debates concerning race, ethnicity and cultural identity could all too easily skate over the implicit assumptions present within the dialogue of such debates. One of the concerns I have is with the nature of labelling and the way in which this can, often detrimentally, fix phenomena in artificial essence. In this paper, I would like to take a look at Wittgenstein's concept of 'language-games' to see if such a concept could be of value when considering these points. Given that Wittgenstein felt that his language-game methodology could act as a type of therapy, it would be interesting to consider its use within the psychotherapeutic frame.