Fanon and Negritude, Alienation within himself Flashcards
How does Fanon view Blackness in relation to coloniser consciousness?
Fanon makes the claim that “a Black is not a man,” suggesting that he is beholden to a bastardised, coloniser consciousness and that he can only see himself through the testimony of the white gaze.
What personal struggle does Fanon face regarding his Blackness?
Fanon evokes his own personal struggle with his Blackness — he writes of considering transcending this with great pathos to “forget everything, provided the [white] world integrated me.”
irrational
Why does Fanon find his desire to be accepted by the white world ultimately unfulfilled?
He finds that this fails: the white Other is uninteresting in recognising his elusive goal of being recognised as a human.
He attempts to utilise reason, but finds this approach wanting too: he is unable to rationalise with the irrational: “for a man armed solely with reason, there is nothing more neurotic than contact with the irrational.”
How does Fanon view Aimé Césaire’s role in the development of Négritude?
Indeed, Fanon is intentional in particularly praising the work of Aimé Césaire. He says “A European familiar with the current trends of Negro poetry… would be amazed to know that as late as 1940 no Antillean found it possible to think of himself as a negro.
It was only with the appearance of Aimé Césaire that the acceptance of negritude and the statement of its claims began to be perceptible.”
How does Fanon initially turn to Négritude, and what does he find in it?
Following this, he opts for the ‘strategic essentialism’ of the Négritude movement, to embrace his supposedly essentially Black qualities.
Fanon shared much with Cesaire and Songhor
How does Fanon show his disillusionment?
Senghor: “Emotion is Negro as Reason is Hellenic.”
Fanon sarcastically quips, “Yes, we[…] are backward, naïve, and free.”
How is Fanon in dialogue with Sartre regarding Négritude?
He abandons Négritude upon reading Sartre’s 1948 essay Orphée Noir. This work introduced the movement to many white French intellectuals.
What is Fanon’s opening GAMBIT in BSWM?
Fanon’s opening gambit introduces the central concept of the zone of non-being. The zone of non-being is the “hell”, as Fanon puts it, of blackness honestly confronted with its condition in an anti-Black world.
How did Sartre understand negritude?
Using Hegelian dialectics, Sartre argued that Négritude was merely a necessary stage in a dialectic, the antithesis to white supremacy - ‘anti-racist’ racism.
How does Fanon critique Sartre’s understanding of alienation?
Insufficient in its application to black people
What is Fanon’s argument regarding the alienation of Black people under Western rule?
Black people living under Western rule experience a more brutal form of alienation by virtue of being born into a society which sees Blackness itself as foreign and ‘wrong.’
writing style
How does Fanon express his frustration with Négritude and its failure to provide agency?
The autobiographical mode in which Fanon writes allows the reader to feel his frustration at Négritude’s inability to provide him with the agency he so desperately seeks — he closes the chapter with ‘I began to weep.’
What does Fanon’s weeping signify in the context of his alienation?
He is not consigned to this alienation but somewhere within he is a man - he is not wholly alienated from the natural enthusiasm he was born with
What is the significance of Fanon’s assertion that he is a man, despite his alienation?
Fanon is artful at conveying the paradox of his weeping at the thought that he is not a man as evidence that somehow he knows that — ontologically, if not on the social plane — he is, and should be treated as such.
This links to Introduction as he proclaimed, ‘we must unleash the man’: there is a man within, waiting to be freed.
How does Fanon view the development of a transcendent subjectivity within himself?
Contrasting his claim in the Introduction that ‘a Black is not a man,’ it appears that the unalienated side of his consciousness is gaining traction.
at least in a space in his mind, from the chains of Blackness.
What does the introduction of BSWM contain that causes the following chapters to assert this?
The introduction to Black Skin, White Masks contains key conclusions and foundational pieces of analysis summed up Fanon’s simple declaration: that Black people are locked in blackness and white people are locked in whiteness.
The chapters that follow are in many ways a long, sustained argument for these assertions, venturing into questions of language, sexuality, embodiment, and dialectics.
