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Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Arts One Jon Beasley-‐Murray
January, 2014
Peeling back the Mask?
• Freud • Fanon • Hybridity • Postcolonialism • Psychology • IdenFty • AcFon
Fanon’s book returns to Freud, but also to other central figures of the twenFeth-‐century, to produce a fragmented, disjointed, hybrid text that announces its own insufficiency. The image and the imaginary are central to his account, but in the end coherence is only achieved through acFon, not through (self-‐)reflecFon: we become by doing.
FREUD
Sigmund Freud
“We are all socialists now.” (Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt, 1887; later repeated by the future Edward VII, 1895) “We are all Freudians now” (W H Auden)
Freud
• Vocabulary • Thought • Imagery • A`tude • Denial
• This will be the basis of Foucault’s criFque
Freud
• Freud is diffused in both high and low culture • But which Freud? • “Returning” to Freud • Synthesizing Freud and… • RelaFvizing Freud • Freud against Freud • Forge`ng Freud?
Freud and Lacan
• 1901-‐1981 • psychoanalyst • influenced by structuralism (Saussure)
• Unconscious “structured like a language”
• imaginary, symbolic, real
FANON
“The Fme has come to return to Fanon; as always, I believe, with a quesFon: how can the human world live its difference? how can a human being live Other-‐wise?” (Homi Bhabha)
Fanon
• 1925-‐1961 • b. MarFnique • d. Bethesda, MD • 1943: Free French • 1953: Algeria • Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
• The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
Fanon
• Upper-‐middle class family • Sent to private school for local blacks • 1943: Free French Movement • 1944: French Army and invasion of Europe • 1947: to France (Lyon) for studies • 1953: Psychiatrist in town south of Algiers • 1956: Sends leker of resignaFon
Fanon
• Famous in the 1950s and 1960s • Revived in the 1990s to the present • Then: The Wretched of the Earth • Now: Black Skin, White Masks • Then: theorist of violence • Now: theorist of subjecFvity • Then: what is to be done? • Now: who is in a posiFon to do?
HYBRIDITY
Spanish casta painDng
“Making [the black man] speak pidgin is tying him to an image, snaring him, imprisoning him as the eternal vicFm of his own essence, of a visible appearance for which he is not responsible.” (18)
Hybridity
• Biological • Cultural • Social • LinguisFc • Textual
• To talk of hybridity is to invoke myth of purity
Hybridity
• For Fanon, race has likle to do with biology • It also has remarkably likle to do with culture • He is interested in social and poliFcal factors… • …and their psychological effects • IdenFty is therefore spaFal and malleable • Fanon’s text reflects its fragmented object • Psychology, Sociology, Literature, Philosophy • Freud, Marx, Césaire, Hegel, Sartre
POSTCOLONIALISM
Postcolonialism
• DecolonizaFon • 1776-‐1825 • 1948-‐1975 • poliFcs and culture • renaming and refounding
• naFon and naFonalism • division and parFFon • past and present
Postcolonialism
• What grounds postcolonial legiFmacy? • What are the poliFcs of idenFty and power? • Is “authenFcity” jusFficaFon? • What cultural templates are available? • Provincializing Europe • What is the psychology of the postcolony?
• How to escape “monotonies of history”?
MarDnique
Algeria
History of the French Empire
French Empire, 1919-‐1939
French Fourth Republic (mostly)
Postcolonialism
• French decolonizaFon: 1940-‐1977 • Most intense: 1954-‐1960 • ParFcularly traumaFc, especially Algeria • SomeFmes peaceful, someFmes violent • “Independence” only one stage of process • Fanon a postcolonial thinker avant la lekre • What is the psychology of the postcolony?
PSYCHOLOGY
“Whatever the field we studied, we were struck by the fact that both the black man, slave to his inferiority, and the white man, slave to his superiority, behave along neuroFc lines.” (41-‐2) “A black man, therefore, is constantly struggling against his own image.” (170)
Psychology
• sexuality and aggression • normality and deviance • is and ought • self and other • imaginary and real
Psychology
• Whites affected as much as blacks • Colonialism an all-‐encompassing condiFon • Freud: a theorist of the European mind • Mental distress is social, not merely familial • The importance of schooling and pop culture
• From Oedipus to master/slave
IDENTITY
What’s the Deal about IdenFty?
• Who am I? • A = A? • Difference and RepeFFon
• Copy and Original • CitaFon, IteraFon, Singularity
“SubjecFvely and intellectually the AnFllean behaves like a white man. But in fact he is a black man. He’ll realize that once he gets to Europe.” (126) “My black skin is not a repository for specific values.” (202)
IdenFty
• Is blackness (or whiteness) an idenFty? • Should it be? • Do masks hide or construct idenFty? • Is idenFty a maker of essence?
• Fanon turns against his master, Césaire • Renouncing both France and negritude
ACTION
“What emerges then is a need for combined acFon on the individual and the group. As a psychoanalyst I must help my paFent to “consiousnessize” his unconscious, to no longer be tempted by a hallucinatory lacFficaFon, but also to act along the lines of a change in social structure.” (80)
“Another soluFon is possible. It implies restructuring the world.” (63) “It is by going beyond the historical and instrumental given that I iniFate my cycle of freedom.” (205)
AcFon
• From passivity (passion) to acFon
• ExistenFalism and authenFcity
• Bad vs. good faith • AcFng and performance • The consFtuFve act
AcFon
• There is nothing unreal about a mask • There is nothing real about skin • Masks both enable and disable • Skin, too, both enables and disables • From being to becoming • From (self-‐)reflecFon to acFon • From the imaginary to the real
“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” (Marx, “Thesis Eleven”)
More Resources
• Isaac Julien, Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask
• hkp://artsone-‐open.arts.ubc.ca
