Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin White

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York:

Grove, 1967.

Fanon examines language's role in the black man's alienation from the other, the European (17). In his words, "a man who has language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language" (18). Simply put, language acts as a route into the colonizer's culture. The colonized person "who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool" of language (38). Throughout the course of the chapter, Fanon illustrates how the Negro of the Antilles (and all colonized peoples) faces the discriminating facet of language. Fanon examines the social division illustrated by language in Antilles. He shows how it is spoken by the lower classes and the uneducated; he emphasizes that schools forbid the speaking of Creole. Branching out from his native island, he looks at what happens when Antilleans' encounter the motherland and how it psychologically alters their personality. Finally, he turns to the colonizers themselves and examines how the European's adopting of "pigeon English," unintentional as it might be, to address a black man propagates the binary system imposed by colonization itself. In his words, "to make him talk pigeon is to fasten him to the effigy of him, to snare him, to imprison him the eternal victim of essence, of an appearance for which he is not responsible" (35). He ends the chapter by emphasizing, not the need to educate the colonized in the white man's language, but the necessity of showing them how to shed the archetypes under which they exist (36).

CH2.

Working on the premise that white and black represent two poles of a world in perpetual conflict, Fanon examines the extent to which authentic love between a black woman and a white man will remain "unattainable before one has purged oneself of that feeling of inferiority" (42). To ascertain this possibility, he looks at several accounts of such a love affair: Je Suis Martiniquaise by Mayotte Capecia, and Nini by Abdoulaye Sadji. In his discussion of Capecia, Fanon looks at a black woman's desire for "lactification" (57). Through marriage to a white man or by being mulatto, she becomes a part of that world and hence closer to being white. Sadji's novel highlights the importance of cultural whiteness to the black man's mind; it relates the story of a black woman's reactions to the advances of a black man. In both instances Fanon finds that the desire to obtain a degree of whiteness never concludes in becoming white. To his mind, both works demonstrate that "the negro is enslaved by his inferiority, the white man by his superiority" (60). It is the black man's constant psychological need for white approval, by becoming in degrees more like him, that Fanon posits as his largest concern.

Fanon turns to the novel Rene Moran to examine the dynamic between the man of color and the white woman. Here again, he looks at the inferiority complex of the black man and how feeling affects his relation to the white woman. He posits that the hero, Jean Veneuse, is an abandonment neurotic. He is neither fully accepted by the whites for what he is -- he is allowed to marry a white woman only if he claims to be "extremely brown" -- nor the blacks of his native Antilles. In Fanon's words, he suffers from a "recrimination toward the past, a devaluation of self, incapability of being understood as he is" (73). Fanon uses the psychosis of the main character to illustrate that it is not the color of his skin that alienates him, but rather it is "psychological elements" that "alienate a black man from his fellow Negroes" (79).

Fanon reviews Dominique Mannoni's book, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization. He begins by approving of the purpose of Mannoni's work, that "the problem of colonialism includes not only the interrelations of objective historical conditions but also human attitudes toward these conditions" (84). He ultimately, however, objects to Mannoni's supposition that the seed of the inferiority complex predates colonization. Specifically, Fanon criticizes Mannoni's assertion that racism isn't a reflection of economic factors by reminding us that "economic exclusion results from [ . . . ]the fear of competition and the desire both to protect the poor-white class that forms half the European population and to prevent it from sinking any lower" (88). Mannoni's belief that colonial racism is different than other kinds of racism Fanon dismisses as utterly naive: "All forms of exploitation are identical because all of them are applied against the same 'object': man" (88). He next turns to Mannoni's statement that a minority can only have experiences of dependency or inferiority toward the majority (92-93). Fanon spends the remainder of the chapter disproving this claim by engaging with various aspects of Mannoni's argument. He concludes that Mannoni's lacks foundation for his claims.

Fanon focuses this chapter on the observation that only in interaction with the white man is the black man compelled to "experience his being" (109). He argues that, contrary to other claims, this condition is not reciprocal; only the black man suffers from a 3rd person view of himself. Fanon strives to find an identity for the black man outside the parameters of the white man's view. He draws comparisons and contrasts to the black man and the Jew, yet he finds that he still has no identity there. He examines antiquated identities of the black man, his closer connection to the world and his ancient civilizations, and still finds him denied autonomy. In his exploration of black identity he engages Sartre's view that a black man's identity is not formed by himself but that he steps into an identity already created for him (138, 134). Fanon ends his examination in dispair.

P.27 & 40 Discusses Michael Leiris' article, "Martinique-Guadeloupe-Haiti." He believes that Creole language will fade in direct relation to the growth of education gradient and that its adoption serves as a hollow means of revolt against the colonizers. Fanon disagrees; saying that there is a racial difference inherent in the use of Creole as apposed to other dialects that Leriris ignores.

P30 Fanon relates scientific and biblical statements of the Black man's inferiority and disregards the temptation to counter them.

P31 Fanon begins to analyze the white man's use of pigeon English as a means of suppression.

P. 61 Here is a brief introduction to Alfred Adler's Understanding Human Nature. Fanon posits that Adler's beliefs will allow us better understand the "conception of the world held by the Black man.

P. 59 Fanon uses Anna Freud's discussion of ego-withdrawal to support his claim of Black neurosis in relation to the white man.

P. 72 Fanon uses Germaine Guex's, La nevros d'abandon, to support his labeling Jean Veneuse as an abandonment neurotic.

P.96 Quotes Aime Cesaire to disprove Mannoni's failure to acknowledge the colonized person's interwoven relationship with the colonizer.

P.98 Engages with Mannoni's belief that that the black man is unable to become white in the white man's eyes because of his "dependency complex": he defines himself in relation to the white man (98-100).

Moten, Fred. In the Break: the Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: