Franz Fanon inspired a lot of later thinkers (Spivak, Said, …). Grew up in a relatively privileged family in Martinique.
He was the person thinking about what racism does to the black mind. Doesn’t look at racism purely materially, as he was a psychiatrist.
Spoke French perfectly. Moved to Paris to study (where he becomes a psychiatrist), practices medicine in a hospital in Southern France, moves to Algeria, joins the Algerian struggle and becomes the ambassador of Alger to Ghana.
Died young, from leukemia. Known for two books - Black Skin, White Masks, and Wretched of the Earth.
He speaks about violence as a way for the colonized subject to escape the grasp of the white colonizer. First book was read by phenomenologists, psychoanalysts, discourse people (Foucault).
Second book had enormous influence on Third-World theorists, anti-colonial struggles. This is also where he moves from racism to anti-colonialism.
What does racism do to the subject (victim) of racism? A form of objectification that makes it impossible for a black person to relate to themselves ‘in a normal way.’ Most of the book is descriptive, sometimes with input from his patients (even quoting patient reports) on how black people are treated by whites.
He argues that a form of catharsis is required to escape the grasp of the white hand on the black subject. Violence, armed resistance in the name of anti-colonial struggle is what provides this catharsis.
You can read Fanon as a Marxist that speaks of the effect on the mind of racism, uses Marxism to apply it to racism.
We read ‘The Black Man and Language,’ talking about what Frenchness does to the Martinican subjects.
Speaks of how it is impossible for a speaker of creole to think of that language as ‘pure,’ thus seeking to escape to ‘proper’ language as quickly as possible.
This is why he stresses his perfect grasp of French. He thinks of himself as a french person, living in the french life-world, having french thoughts and experiences, yet being constantly objectified by people pointing at his skin color, thus constantly being seen as an Other that cannot integrate as a true Frenchman.
The question is ‘what the existential condition of a black subject is.’ Similar to Arendt kinda.
Lived experience of a black person moving to France, trying to show that racism and colonialism involve the whole self, they determine you completely.
In the way the black person walks, talks, and thinks of themselves, they have an ‘illness,’ speaks of being black as a pathology. It’s a collective problem caused by racism.
The black person has a mimetic impulse to be white, to be perfectly white, leading to alienation.
A child pointing him out in public reflects how he’s not seen as being french, not being part of the society (despite him being perfectly french).
His skin refuses him the ticket to be French.
This idea is based on the idea that speaking a language makes one be a part of that cultural community from which the language comes.
This means that colonized subjects speak the world of the colonizer; they read sources from Paris, they really are French persons who assume the French culture, being assimilated. He thinks of this as colonizing subjects participating in their own alienation brought upon by white colonialism.
[Essay question: how does the language problem in Ukraine reflect the desire of people to ensure a shared and separate cultural sphere in a Fanon manner.]
“When I meet a German or a russian speaking bad French, I try to indicate in gestures the directions he is asking for, but in doing this I try not to forget that he has a language of his own, who may be a lawyer or an engineer, there is nothing comparable in speaking to a black man, there is no past to refer to.” [badly transcribed but whatever, i’ll find the quote]
The russian or the German speaks broken French, as it were, but this is the result of that person have a large civilization behind them; there is no such background for a Martinican, however.
(Fanon deals only with French colonialism.)
Creole is never an option for Fanon. He argues against the Negritude of Césaire, as he does not think that pride in Creole, in Blackness, is a solution, as it is not at the same level. His parents told him not to speak Creole, as with many others.
On the one hand, thus, there is the directive to be a ‘perfect Frenchman’ (as with diction), yet the never-acceptance of him as a Frenchman.
[epidermal racial schema]
The extension of Marxism to the minds and racism was new at the time.
One of the other controversial bits is that he thinks of interracial (sexual/romantic) desires as pathological. It is caused by the desire to be white. A black woman may desire a white man, in order to become as white as possible. Vice-versa, too, but also in order to have the sensation of being loved as a white man. He thinks we should see this as harmful to the mental health of those engaging in it.
Mental and cultural violence render people into colonized subjects.
He also talks about the gaze of Sartre in this book. He says, that when Sartre talks of antisemitism, he stresses that the anti-Semite is afraid of Jews. Thus, Sartre can analyze it as a form of fear; but the racist does not fear the black man - it would be good if there was fear, says Fanon, but the phenomenological experience is not like that.
It’s about fixation of identity. A white child pointing at a black man seals the black man as a black man.
The epidermal nature of race makes it impossible for the black man to become white, yet the black man still hates all that makes him black.
The white man provides the yardstick against which all is measured; the white world is the ‘true’ world, and the black world is different from it.
This is why he thinks the negritude movement is problematic, too essentialist, too ontological. It assumes an equally simple relation […], but it does not account for the impossibility. He sees the movement as a ‘great black mirage.’ There is no black essence, so you shouldn’t place a political struggle on that basis.
He thinks that any identity should be used instrumentally, strategically, for the struggle. But there is no identity there for him.
His end goal is liberation from (in a Marxist vein) alienation. Liberation is being recognized as an equal human being.
[Possibly reminiscent of the Deleuzian struggle of capitalism for the schizophrenic horizon ← trying to become a Frenchman while never being able to achieve it.]
Now we must think of revolution; it is intended to decolonize society, thus decolonizing the mind. The revolutionary struggle’s goal is decolonizing the mind, curing the black people of the pathology of living in a white world.
Fanon even toys with using the Islamic tradition after moving on from Blackness, trying to go to local traditions that are not a mirage (as with Césaire’s negritude). This is why he supports the Algerian liberation movement.
He views himself as a pro-violence pan-Africanist. He tries to warn against intranational conflicts, the enemy being Europe. He wants to get to a situation where Europe cannot dictate the minds of everyone else.
He argues that Europe should be provincialized.
In the Wretched of the Earth, he finally starts arguing for violence. In the colony we have three figures:
the workers ← provide the material needs of the colonizer, but are exploited by the system (though still part of it)
the colonized intellectual ← translates colonized life into the colonizing power’s language; there is promise here, but they ultimately aid the colonizer.
the lumpen proletariat ← he sees the greatest potential here (big break with Marx, who saw these people as having no revolutionary potential, being easily bribed by the bourgeois, who can’t get to class consciousness). This group, to Fanon, is not part of the cycle. They don’t get help from the colonizer, nor help the colonizer. Thus they are a great threat to the system, by being outside it. [very interesting to think about hegemony and passive consent.]
The armed struggle creates new collective identity. He argues that through this one can get to a new humanity without needing the Europeans. The second book is still under great skepticism. Violence creates a new human being.
[research question → Rawls’ basic structure vs. “Berger and Luckmann’s answer appears to be that, while pluralism does indeed generate crises, there exists a bed-rock (‘sedimentation’) of taken-for-granted beliefs which are sufficient to make everyday worlds manageable.” → this could address the issue of ‘bare people:’ you can sediment something acceptable to all without needing a base person to agree on it, simply create a field of things taken for granted.]
Spivak argues that the subaltern speak the jargon of the cultural imperialist.
Glissant argues for a right to opacity; you should respect otherness rather than try to understand everyone and everything - you can love and respect them regardless.
[This is Gadamer] fusion of horizons → when conversing, create a separate language to both parties, thus understanding each other. Gadamer argues that if you want to understand deconstruction you must understand that you are at the beginning of the conversation → we start off as very different people, but slowly progress towards something we share. With this you non-reductively understand the other.
Glissant argues, however, that the fusion is not impartial, the colonizer has more power, thus the fusion will lie closer to the colonizer; the colonizer will dominate. The subaltern will still be unable to speak.
Striving for transparent understanding reduces the Other to one’s own categories. Understanding = grasping. (this is bad, futile, and impossible.)