E-E-305-C. Post Colonial Literature

Paper Name           : E-E-305-C. Post Colonial Literature

Name                      : Amita C. Jani

 Roll No.                  : 10

Semester               : III

Topic                       : Black Skin, White Masks – Frantz Fanon

Date                        : 22/10/2011

Submitted to          : Dr. Dilip Barad

                                   Department of English,

                                   Bhavnagar University.

Black Skin, White Masks – Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon was born in Martinique in 1925 and went to school there first, before moving to metropolitan France to continue his education. During the Second World War, he served in Free French Army, which took him for the first time to North Africa. After the war, he studied medicine and psychiatry at University of Lyons, completing his training in 1951. Two years he was appointed to run the psychiatry department.

Fanon’s short life would probably have been only a foot note to the end of France’s colonial empire in Africa if he had not written two books - “Black Skin, White Masks” which you hold in your hand and “The Wretched of the Earth”. In these books, Fanon explored the nature of colonialism and racism and the psychological damage they caused in colonial people and in colonizer. There are three intertwined themes in Fanon’s writing a critique of ethno psychiatry which aimed to provide an account of the mental life, in sickness and in health of colonized people and of the Euro centrism of psychoanalysis, a dialogue with negritude, then the dominant system of thought among black francophone intellectuals in which he challenges its account of the mental life of black people and the development of a political philosophy for decolonization that starts with an account of the psychological harm that colonialism had produced.

In “Black Skin, White Masks”, Fanon also develop an account of the psychological effects of the racism based, in part, on his own experiences of life among the black middle class in the French Caribbean. The dominant colonial culture, he argues identified the black skin of the Negro with imparity and the Antilleans accept this association and so come to despise themselves. Colonial women exhibit their identification with whiteness, for example by attempting neurotically to avoid black men and to get close to white men: a process Fanon dubbed “ratification”. Fanon’s approach in “Black Skin, White Masks” focuses on the problems of identity created for the colonial subject by colonial racism from these neuroses, which colonialism had produced.

“Black Skin, White Masks” is a searching indictment of colonialism; it is also hopeful invitation to a new relation between Black and White colonizers and colonized. In the last page of book he says “Move away from the inhuman voices of their respective ancestors so that a guanine communication can be born”.

The book looks at what goes through the minds of blacks and whites under the condition of white rule and the strange effect that has, especially on black people. Every now and then he says something wow that keeps you going but it is requires rereading and a good deal of thought to understand a given chapter. In the book the ward colonial refers to the geographic place and any literature is written in that freedom time started colony and its called colonial studies.

In the all chapters of his book, Fanon tries to understand some following question which can be unanswerable.

• Why we obsess with white color or white men?
• Are we happy with the color which we warn with?
• Why do we want to be white?
• What are the problems of black?
• What is mean by whiteness or blackness?

Then he talked about humanism and said that humanism cannot be white of black. He said that recognize me as a human being. His major concern in the text is, it’s difficult to mix black and white and so he asked some questions in text like...

• What does a man want?
• What does a black man wants?

It seems that a black man cannot be a mankind??

Then Fanon talks about inferiority of Black and said that money generates a dominant class means ideology. It means that a black man can become a rich than white man but it doesn’t make basic different of black and white. Then he talked about internalization and he is disagreed with Freud that black men’s problem is collective problem and he called it that is in society itself.

He talked that “I shall be derelict but he points out various attitudes of black man to white culture. In book  “Black Skin, White Masks”, first chapter of book deals with modern Negro and history of Negro and last two chapters of book deals with psychological or philosophical explanation of the state of being a Negro. Chapter four is about Mannoni’s work. Chapter five is more important because it talked about fact of blackness and how Negro looks at Negro. Then he talks about black man at home men the place where black man live. Then at general view Fanon said in this book that not only “Jungle Savage” but juxtaposition of the white and black race has created a massive complex. Then Fanon talked about self and other men he tried to say that what subject concerted is other not I.

Chapter – I: The Black Man and Language:

In this chapter talks about language that language is dimension of the other so he wants to begin with language that is language is colonization than in this chapter Fanon talks about Black Men’s two dimensions

1. Black as fellow
2. Black as others

So in this context he said that Negro behave differently with a white man and another Negro. So here in very first chapter Fanon talks about behavior problem about people and he said that you need to be free from that obsession of being black because being black is out mental condition. It’s out mental state that make you black and white and then he talks that language gives you a path and it possesses the world. Then he writes that “The white man is locked in his whiteness and the black man in his blackness”. Fanon than writes the effect of hybrid or mix effect of colonization. He said that Creole is a hybrid language or local and colonized language had in this way it’s become a Creole language. So here Fanon discussed about language and culture and in this context Fanon write in the text that..

In the end of this chapter Fanon said that blackness become the identity of black people that we are not nameless but we have our own identity. Then he said that “It’s ok you are black but in middle you are white”, means you have a capacity of white that is language.

So the conclusion of this chapter can be like this that if you do not learn the white men’s language perfectly than you are unintelligent, yet if you do learn it perfectly, you have washed your brain in their universe of racist ideas so first pickup the language.

Chapter – II: The Woman of Color and the White Man:

In this chapter Fanon used the term “Woman of color”, it refers to black woman and to understand problem of black woman. Fanon analyzed about one martini can woman and he observed that she loves white man and summit herself totally to him and she said “All I know is that he had blue eyes, blond hair, a pale complexion and I loved him”. By this, Fanon represents frighten Negro and he presents the two pole of the word or conflict of white and black.

The idea of white and black is about full of Narcissism and both – black and white cannot live without each other and Fanon further talks that when a white man marry with black woman it is acceptable but when a white woman marry a black man, she have to go away or she cannot get him or she will not accept him. Then again in this chapter Fanon deals with basic personality of people and he said that all of us born with some common structure like our family mean we all have a family that is common structure among all. So here Fanon tries to question this that basic personality is constant or a variable?  He tries to say that every black man have a desire of being white and he said that the black man cannot talk pleasure in his identity but for him there is only one to be happy that Leeds them white world. Here Fanon talks about behavior or mind or he is not historical. He said that Black required white approval or a colonized always need approval of dominant people. Then he said about attitude of black and white, then bad or negative attitude always go with black or positive or good thing goes with always behavior.

Then Fanon talked about mulatto that is a law Negro and also called color, he discussed the experience of being mulatto and said that when he crossed proposed the white woman; he crossed the line of being suppress. Then in this chapter he talks about a white man to the mulatto girl and when this news spread in the society, something happen if, there is a question in all’s minds that is it true? Or it should not be happen. Fanon tries to understand that what is the ambition of black woman is it to marry a white man? That said that something remarkable must have happened on the day when the white man declared his love to the mulatto but problem is that after wishing or marrying with white mulatto cannot forget that she is mulatto, at that time problem occurs. And this way she crossed many limits like historical than ethnological, sociological, political, economical factors, theological and then all this above become the reason for her inferior complex.

So conclusion of this chapter can be said that these woman look down on their own race and deep down wants to be white.

Chapter – III: The man of color and the white man:

In this chapter basically Fanon deals with two ideas that black man wants to be white because they have power and money, but in the contradictory black don’t like white so when this two feelings comes together at that time conflict occurs.

In this chapter Fanon further discussed about the neurotic problems or it can be negative or positive or he also talked about the feelings of rejection and he said that in this problem basically what happens is devaluation of self and he again said that problem is in you not outside. Neurotic not comes out from outside but grows in our self and then conflicts happen in within you or because of that you started reacting to influence and then come state of inner insecurity and all this happen with black.

So in the conclusion of this chapter it can be said that black man wants to be said that black man wants to be white too or at least prove they are equal to whites and here he talks about behavior white women that she will marry with uneducated white rather than an educated black.

Chapter – IV: The So-Called Dependency Complex of the Colonized                  

In this chapter Fanon read Mannoni - a writer of colonialism, he dismissed with Mannoni and said that he has no understanding what real colonialism is. According to Fanon, Mannoni look at only historical condition but he must be look at human attitudes also. Fanon here said that I cannot understand colonized with historical argue but it can be look with psychological point of view. Mannoni said that we born with inferiority complex and that it is not something like develop but it is something that is exists in society, but Fanon clear his point that it cannot be so, because either you can be black or you can be white. Only Mannoni believes that the concept of the poor whites of South Africa, for the Negro, has nothing to do with economic factor, now here Fanon said that no economic factor affects on black and then he gives the example of Jew, and Fanon said that it is because of basic racial structure.

So here he said about the idea of reorganization and said that the question of black and white is universal.

Chapter - IV: The Lived Experience of the Black Man:

In this chapter Fanon being with one sentence that is “Dirty Nigger!!” or simply “Look! A Negro!”. Now the two words that is “Dirty Nigger” or “A Negro” shows that they become object among other objects, here by this Fanon said that they became object only, than Fanon put a stress on then ontology does not allows us to understand the being of the black man, since it ignores the live experience for not only must the black man be black, he must be black in relation to the white man. Some people will argue that the situation has a double meaning but here Fanon said that it’s not so and said that the black man has no ontology resistance in the eyes of white man. He said that the black man is a toy in or object in the hands of the white man. Here again Fanon said that a black wanted to be while and it become joke for white and when black tried to claim their negritude intellectually as a concept, they snatched it away from them and in this way they proved to them that their reasoning was nothing but a phase in the dialectic.

In this chapter Fanon said that Black man always black, never fully human. No matter how much education they have or how they acts.

Chapter – VI: The Black Man and Psychology

Fanon here writes that why white people are so afraid of black men or black men are seen as being way less moral or white men fear they will take white men fear they will take white women from them and he give one example in the text that a normal black child having grown up with a normal family, will become abnormal at the slightest contact with the white world. He said about collective unconscious and asks that what do we see in the case of the black man? We can understand absolutely nothing. A drama is played out every day in the colonized countries. White also use blacks as scapegoats it is easier for them to imagine black as the screwed up ones intend the idea of black people as morally bad and white as morally pure.

In conclusion Fanon said that why white people fear black men parity it has to do with white men’s repressed homosexuality and their strange hang-ups about black men’s penises. More generally, black men are viewed as bodied makes them seems like mindless, violent, sexual, animal beings, add to that all the bad meanings that the word “Black” had even before Europeans set foot in Black Africa.

Chapter – IIV: The Black Man and Recognition:

In this chapter Fanon talks about reorganization function and he said that it is not that black is black and white is white but blackness created by white and whiteness is created by black so in this way recognition function he said that self consciousness exists in itself and for itself and I this way we are always concern about our own self but in real sense it is not so but its other who recognized you. There is not and open conflict white master recognized the Negro slave then he gives one example that white masters called black that you are useless and when black men believe in that then only reorganization happens. It mean here Fanon want to say that if is recognized you as human being you have to recognize me as a human being and Fanon was not a big believer of Adler and Hegel, but nonetheless he used their ideas as jumping off points to understand the black from his home island Martinique.

The conclusion of this chapter is how different shaped black people in America and Martinique styles of white rules.

Chapter – IIIV: By Way of Conclusion:

In the conclusion of the book, in last chapter he writes, Fanon does not want to be a black men, he wants to be a man, plain and simple. The trouble with blacks and whites is that both have become prisoners of their past and both have to move away from the inhuman voices of their respective ancestors so that a genuine communication can be born. He said why there is superiority? Or Inferiority? Why not simply try to touch the other?  Feel the other? Discover each other? Fanon is not much interested in black history, repetitions, making whites feel guilty or shouting his hatred at them. All those things are a relation against racism, still a prisoner of your past and your color. Fanon says he has only one right and one duty: The right to demand human behavior from the other, the duty to revert let his decisions renounce his freedom. So in conclusion he said that the social revolution cannot draw in poetry from the past but only from the future and one last prayer:

“O my body, always makes me a man, who questions!”