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Introduction
:-
For Fanon, the acts of love and admiration are directly tied to who and what we value. He says, "authentic love...entails the mobilization of psychic drives basically freed of unconscious conflicts". In other words, I cannot seek to love unless I have rid myself, in this case, of my inferiority complex. For black people, this becomes a humongous hindrance because, as Fanon believes, the inferiority complex is what the black world view is mainly comprised of.
Conclusion :-
Name : Pipavat Gopi Y
Sem : 3 ( M.A. English)
Batch Year: 2015- 2017
Paper no. 11: The Postcolonial
Literature
Topic : The Nature of Blackness is within the
Mind with the reference of Black Skin And White Mask
Submitted to :
Prof. Dr. Dilip
Barad,
Head of the
Department,
Department of English
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
This book ‘Black Skin White Masks’ is
written by Frantz Fanon. He was born on July 20, 1925, at Fort-de-France,
Martinique, France. He died at the age of 36, on 6th December
1961 at Bethesda, Maryland. He was revolutionary, philosopher,
psychiatrist and writer whose writing influenced post-colonial studies, Marxism
and critical theory. He was an intellectual fellow political radical, existentialist
humanist; he dealt with social, cultural, political problems.
He supported the Algerian war of independence
from France, and was also a member of the Algerian national liberation front.
The life and works of Frantz fanon have inspired anti-colonial national
liberation movements in Palestine, Sir Lanka, and the U.S .He served in the
French army. He studied Medicine. He was a psychiatrist.
In
France in the year of 1952, Frantz Omar fanon wrote his first book,’ Black
Skin, White Masks.’ The book is an analysis of the negative
psychological impact of colonial subjugation upon black people. Originally, the
manuscript was the doctoral dissertation, submitted at Lyon. Its title was
“Essay on the Desalination of the Black” It was rejected and fanon published it
as a book.
Frantz Fanon was
influenced by many thinkers and traditions including Jean-Paul Sartre, Lacan,
Negritude and Marxism. He was influenced by Aime Cesaire, a leader of the
negritude movement, was teacher and mentor to fanon on the island of
Martinique. Fanon referred to Cesaire’s writings his own work. He quoted, for
example, his teacher at length in “They lived experience of the Black man”
a heavily anthologized essay form Black Skin, White Masks.
Let’s analyze the book
of Fanon ‘Black skin, White Mask’ - This book divided in many chapters. Each
chapter has its own importance. They deal with the psychological aspect. It
includes the condition of Black people and their mentality. It also gives
reflection of white people towards black people. Let’s have a brief look on
chapters of this book.
‘I am black: I am
in total fusion with the world, sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my
id in the heart of the cosmos-and the white man, however intelligent he may be,
is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or Songs from the Congo. I am
black, not because of a curse, but because my skin has been able to capture all
the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a drop of Sun under the earth.
The book is about
the mindset or psychology of racism by Frantz fanon, a Martinican psychiatrist
and black, post colonialist thinker. The book looks at what goes through the
minds of blacks and whites under the conditions of white rule and strange
effects that has especially on black people.
The
book contains eight chapters. All the chapters deal with discrimination. Now,
let’s have a very brief note of all the chapters:
1.
Chapter One :- The Negro and Language
2.
Chapter Two :-The Woman of Color and the White Man
3.
Chapter Three :-The Man of Color and the White Woman
4.
Chapter Four :- The So-Called Dependency Complex of Colonized Peoples
5.
Chapter Five :- The Fact of Blackness
6.
Chapter Six :- The
Negro and Psychopathology
7.
Chapter Seven :- The Negro and Recognition
8.
Chapter Eight :- By Way of Conclusion
Let’s have a look on
each and every chapter one by one.
1. Chapter One :- The Negro and Language :-
“O my body,make of me always a Man who
questions!”-
Black Skin,White
Masks
“What I want to do is
help the black man to free himself the arsenal of complexes that has been
developed by the colonial environment.”
In this chapter, Fanon
shares his thoughts on how language choice reveals some of the effects
oppression has had on the black psyche. He points out that, for black people,
"to speak is to exist absolutely for the other" meaning that the
language one chooses to communicate with requires that he or she "assume a
culture, support the weight of a civilization". Key to this theory is the
notion that, in the oppressed black mind, there is the tendency to equate
European culture and whiteness with humanity. Thus, "the Negro will become
whiter--become more human--as he masters the white man's language".
2. Chapter
Two :- The Woman of Color and the White Man
"Me? a Negress? Can't
you see I'm practically white? I despise Negroes. Niggers stink. They're dirty
and lazy. Don't ever mention niggers to me"
~Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon
~Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon
And now we move to one of the more
exciting chapters in Fanon's book, "The Woman of Color and the White
Man". Fanon's analysis, as we have seen, is based primarily on the
Martinican relationship to France during his time. As such, he decides to
analyze a book written in 1948 by a black woman--Mayotte Capecia--in which she
divulges her reasons for being exclusively attracted to white men.
For Fanon, the acts of love and admiration are directly tied to who and what we value. He says, "authentic love...entails the mobilization of psychic drives basically freed of unconscious conflicts". In other words, I cannot seek to love unless I have rid myself, in this case, of my inferiority complex. For black people, this becomes a humongous hindrance because, as Fanon believes, the inferiority complex is what the black world view is mainly comprised of.
3. Chapter
Three :- The Man of Color and the White Woman
Fanon argues that the nature of this
relationship is also rooted in the latent desire to become white. On page 63 he
writes,
"By loving me [a white
woman] proves that I am worthy of white love. I am loved like a white man. I am
a white man."
As in the previous chapter,
Fanon uses a work of literature to illustrate the psychological character of a
black man who finds himself in love with a white woman. In the novel Un
homme pareil aux autres (A Man Like Any Other) by René Maran, the
protagonist, Jean Veneuse, was born in the Caribbean but has lived in Bordeaux,
France since he was a child. Fanon notes, "he is a European. But he is
Black; so he is a Negro. There is the conflict. He does not understand his own
race, and the whites do not understand him". We also find that because of
these circumstances, Veneuse feels lonely and has developed into what many
would call an introverted bookworm. While we might be led to think that
Veneuse's desire is to prove to his white counterparts that he is their equal,
Fanon believes that Veneuse himself is the man that has to be convinced.
4. Chapter Four :-
The So-Called Dependency Complex of Colonized Peoples
Here, the writer argues
against Fanon’s view that people of color have a deep desire for white rule,
that those who oppose it to do not have a secure sense of self that they have a
chip on their shoulder. From this chapter I came to understand that the
stereotypes of Happy Darkies, Uppity Negroes and White Saviors all come from
the need of white people to feel that their power in society is good and not
racist.
5. Chapter
Five :- The Fact of Blackness
This chapter deals with the condition of
Black people. Though they are highly educated, spiritual and knowledgeable, but
their color of skin giving feeling of embarrassment. Here the sad condition of
those people narrated. This chapter deals with the pathetic conditions of
blacks. They thought that being always black is as if they are never fully
human. No matter how much Education you have or how well you act. They felt
they are just like isolated creature from the world.
6. Chapter
Six :- The Negro and Psychopathology
Here writer ask question to
reader that, Why should people fear black? Question asked here. Part 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 a body,
which makes them seem 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.
7. Chapter
Seven :- The Negro and Recognition
This chapter deals with how
different styles of white rule shaped black people in America and Martinique.
The Martinican is not a Neurotic. If we were
strict in applying the conclusions of the Adlerian school, we should say that
the Negro is seeking to protest against the inferiority that he feels
historically. Since in all periods the Negro has been an inferior, he attempts
to react with superiority complex.
The writer talks about the recognition the
Negroes have started getting in later years. He talks about Adlerian - If I
were an Adlerian, then , having established the fact that my fr5iend had
fulfilled in a dream his wish to become white- that is, to be a man-I would
show him that his neurosis, his psychic instability, the rupture of his ego
arouse out of this governing fiction, and I would say to him:
“Mannoni has very ably
described this phenomenon in the Malagasy. Look here: I think you simply have
to resign yourself to remaining in the place that has been assigned to you”.
8.Chapter
Eight :- By Way of Conclusion
According to Fanon, it was not easy for Black
to forget their past and to free themselves from their past condition. The
relations of Black with white were that of the slaves with their masters.
French asked the writer to reply for an article that he wrote as he was a Negro
who wanted niggers to live with Pride. The writer criticizes their way of
running behind whites and thus doing injustice to their country, their culture,
their natives.
Fanon quotes- I was
committed to myself and to my neighbor to fight for all my life and with all my
strength so that never again would people on the earth be subjugated. It was
not the black world that laid down my course of conduct. My black skin is not
the wrapping of specific values. It is a long time since the starry sky that
away Kant’s breath revealed the last of its secrets to us. And the moral law is
not certain of itself.
Fanon further stresses :-
“There is no white world,
there is no white ethnic any more than there is a white intelligence”.
Conclusion :-
So, at the end we can say that this Book
deals with innumerable example of the Black and white problems, the coloured’s
inferiority complex. Their inner feeling is revealed throughout the book. It
seems that the coloured people themselves did not want to raise high. They were
not ready to think high of themselves instead they ran after mirage which was
not possible. Skin can’t be changed but mentality can be changed so we can
say-
