Winter Week 11 - Fanon Flashcards
What are the two positions of difference colonized subjects are forced into by White colonizers?
- The savage; when rejecting the colonizer’s culture in favor of their own indigenous culture, Blacks etc. are labelled uncivilized and face exclusion from society
- White subject; Blacks can fit into society but an ideal is held over their head, to adopt mother country’s cultural standards, Whites never accept Blacks due to racism
- done by renouncing Blackness, never truly possible without causing major psychological fragmentation
What caused the beginning of the fragmentation process for Fanon?
- the realization of unabashed racism, even though he was ‘well-cultured’ by the standards of the colonizer and exceptionally highly educated
- I was told to stay within bounds, to go back where I belonged
How did Fanon describe his person experience with fragmentation?
- My body was given back to me sprawled out, distorted, recolored, clad in mourning in that white winter day
- transparent,
How did Fanon find his way out of fragmentation?
- freedom isn’t given it is achieved through self-reclamation
- Fanon had enough of navigating b/w two very limited categories
- he set his own terms
What causes the split consciousness that black individuals experience? (Fanon)
- a direct result of colonialist subjugation
- experiencing his being through others, being the other
- being Black in relation to the White man
Define/explain: politics of recognition
- institutional recognition and accommodation of Indigenous cultural difference as an important means of reconciling the colonial relationship between Indigenous people and the state
- frame in terms of which reconciliation might be conceived
3 ways reconciliation tends to be invoked in Canadian context of Indigenous peoples:
- the diversity of individual or collective practices that Indigenous people undertake to re-establish a positive relation-to-self when this relation has beem damaged/distorted by structural/symbolic violence
- the act of restoring estranged or damaged social and political relationships, individuals and groups working to overcome pain/anger/resentment from harm caused by injustice, through institutional means
- process by which things are brought to agreement/concord/harmony, rendering things consistent
What is the core inconsistency between the state’s apologies and goals in reconciliation and their way of acting it out? (Coulthard)
-Indigenous assertions of nationhood vs state’s unilateral assertion of sovereignty over Native people’s land+populations
What is resentment? Why is it viewed negatively? What is the possible positive use of resentment? (Coulthard)
- resentment; bitter indignation at being treated unfairly, politicized anger due to moral injustice, indicates self-worth/respect, can be appropriate and valuable
- in recognition/reconciliation politics resentment is treated as a pathology to overcome, an irrational obsession with past offences, denying the ability to move on with life
- under certain conditions a disciplined maintenance of resentment in the wake of historical injustice can signify the expression of moral protest, permissible and admirable
- can also prompt practices that help rehabilitate
Define/explain: internalization vs. externalization
- internalization; when the social relations of colonialism come to be seen as true/natural to the colonized themselves, inferiority complex, colonial hegemony is maintained through a combination of coercion and consent, more subtle, less bloody
- when both sides hold the same views/assumptions
- externalization; internalized views/assumptions are eventually rejected for resentment, colonized desired what has been denied them, important turning point
- causes them to revalue/reaffirm Indigenous cultural traditions and social practices that were denigrated/attacked under colonial rule, generated pride unknown in the colonial period
- opens up possibility of developing alternative subjectivities and practices
2 broad criticisms of the federal government’s approach to reconciling its relationship with Indigenous peoples:
- states rigid historical temporalization of the problem in need or reconciling (colonial injustice)
- inability to adequately transform the structures that frame Indigenous peoples’ relationship with the state
- by placing the focus on “we cannot change the past” it block discussion over anger caused by our settler-colonial present
- we must focus on the present, the legacy that the past has produced, instead of the implicit/explicit view that there is no colonial present
- applying transitional justice mechanisms to nontransitional circumstances (no clear period marking a clear transition from an authoritarian past to a democratic present)
