A Critical Analysis of ‘Black Skin White Masks’ By Frantz Fanon

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Name:-  Kubavat Kishan B

Semester: - 3

Roll no: - 11

 Enrolment No: - Pg14101021

Year: - 2015-16

Paper No: - 11

Paper Name: - The Postcolonial Literature

Topic: - A Critical Analysis of ‘Black Skin White Masks’

By Frantz Fanon

Email ID: - kishan.kubavat@gmail.com

    

Submitted to: - Department of English

                Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University 

Introduction

 Post-colonialism means time after colonialism. Post-colonialism is study of culture after the physical and political withdrawal of an oppressive power. Post colonialism rejects the dominance of western culture. It challenges Western Knowledge system about East.

As a critical theory, post – colonialism presents, explains, and illustrates the ideology and the praxis of neocolonialism, with examples drawn from the humanities history and political science, philosophy and Marxist theory, sociology,

anthropology, and human geography, the cinema, religion and theology; feminism, linguistics’ and post colonial literature of which the anti conquest narrative garners presents the stories of colonial subjugation of the subaltern man and woman. Salman Rushdie, Ngugi wa Thiong, Frantz Fanon, Toni Morrison, Amei Cesire, Edward Said, Homi Bhaba, and many more writers exploded the PostColonialism.

 Now I am going to discus Frantz Fanon’s work, “The Black Skin White Masks”

v About the Author

The author of ‘Black Skin White Masks’ is Frantz fanon. He was born on July 20, 1925, at Fortde France, Martinique, France. He died at the age of 36, on 6th December1961 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 anticolonial national liberation movements in Palestine, Sir Lanka, and the U.S .He served in the French army. He studied Medicine. He was a psychiatrist.

          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.

“A Critique on Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon”

 There is a new English translation of Black Skin, White Masks since in this first book, Frantz Fanon himself believed that the fight against psychology of racism. Fanon wrote his first book, an analysis of the psychological effects of colonial people identified as black .He use psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical theory of explain the feelings of dependency. He speaks of the divided self perception of the black subject. The book looks at what goes through the minds of Blacks and the strange impacts that has, especially on the black people.

The book started out as his doctoral thesis that he wrote to get his degree in psychiatry. So it is written for white French psychiatrists and speaks mainly about Martinique and France in the early 1950s.It is well worth reading since his understanding of white French racism in the early 1950s and also helps us our to understand white American racism in the 2010s.

We can intemperate that how this White and Black are portrayed in literature in different ways. Novel ‘Oliver Twist’ by Charles Dickens’ in this novel we can find the controversy of Black and White. Here Christianity – Whiteness portrays as goodness, while Jew – Black portrayed as Evil. Here reader can find conflict between Christian v/s Jew. The novel has an idea of Christianity and Jewish. At some extent writer has described Christianity as a superior and dark side of Christianity has been presented. He portrayed Jew in a negative connotation.

Black Skin White Mask is a sociological study of the psychology of racism and dehumanization inherent to colonial domination. Fanon describes that Black people experience in the White world Fanon talks about, self-perception of the Black Subject who has lost his native cultural origin, and embraced the culture of the Mother Country. He also talks about the inferiority complex in the mind of the Black subject.

Now we are analyzing 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.

 1 “The Black man and Language”

This chapter deals with the language of white people. The Language of White people is in centre, and Language of Black people is in periphery. Black people have to learn the language of White people.

Language construct the idea of Civilized or uncivilized. If you do not learn the white man’s language perfectly, you are unintelligent. Yet if you do learn it perfectly, you have washed your brain in their universe of racist ideas. That if a black person does not learn the white man’s language perfectly, he is unintelligent. Yet if he does tern it perfectly, he has washed his brain in the world of racial Ideology.  It shows that language of White people is in power position and Language of Black people has lesser importance

Thus, the language of White people in centre and the Black people don’t learn it they do not get enough values in society of that time. So, Black people have to learn the language of White people.

2. ‘The Woman of color and The ‘Whiteman’.

The idea of blackness, the mind set of people is like this “I loved him because he had blue eyes, blond hair, and a light skin”.  The Mulato, Mulato is a kind of a race which is not black and white. 

I want to be recognize not as black, but as white

The effect of white people also touched to the society. Black Woman also wished the White Skin which White woman has.  How desire of “WHITENESS’ is more in the Black woman. Because of that many ‘FAIRNESS CREAM’ and their industries grow faster and faster.  

“The person I will love will strengthen me by endorsing my assumption of my

manhood, while the need to earn the admiration or the love of others will erect a

Value making super structure on my whole vision of the world.”

The colonized women look down on their own. Race and deep down want to be white. In “The Bluest Eye” of ‘Toni Morrison’ ‘we find a black girls desire Fun the blue eyes of white men and woman’.

Thus here Fanon presents a psychoanalytical study of a black woman.

 3. The Man of Color and the White Woman

The author in this chapter talks about the condition of Block men. He says that these men want to be white too. 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.

Why Whiteness is something goodness?

White people have rules over Black people and they have shaped that idea that whiteness is symbol of Goodness

‘Out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white.’

A white female just because he was raised around whites so he seemed less black .They go with them not out of love but to deal with their own race .Men want to be white too-or at least prove they are equal to whites .Here black men wants to join white women .Prejudices that make him not want to join a white man’s world. As a proud and black skin .Whites represent wealth, beauty, intelligence and virtue.

In literature we can also find an example where Black man wished to have white skin. Gwendolyn Brooke’s poem “We Real Cool” deals with the same theme.

4. The So-called Dependency Complex of the colonized peoples:

In this chapter 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. The fact of Blackness

( Fanon: The Lived Experience of the Black Man )

In this chapter Fanon argues about his own fact of Blackness and his struggle he endured such the psychologically alientaly effects of colonialism and racism. Fanon was a Martinican psychiatrist but in the White society, “He is seen not as Dr. Fanon but as Black man”. In this racist society, Fanon argues, Black people “experience being through others”.

  “Dirty nigger!” Or simply, “Look, a Negro!”

Fanon’s experience as Black man in the white society feels inferiority and says “Always a Negro, never a man”. And also he describe as a “real dialect between my body and the world”. There is same idea expresses his feeling of inferiority and says, “Sin is Black as Virtue is White”. In the White world he himself considered as he is Wretch. And this chapter also 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. The Negro and Psychopathology

 In this chapter 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. The Negro and Recognition

Section-A “The Negro and Adler”

In this section fanon applies Adler’s personality theory to the ‘Antillean Negro’, How Antillean Negro act towards each other. Fanon says, that “The question is always whether he is less intelligent than I, blacker than I, less respectable than I”. The “question of value” that plagues the neurotic Antillean Negro is historically constructed and has arisen out of colonialism.

In this chapter Fanon also talks about the role colonial education. “It is because the Negro belongs to an “inferior” race that he seeks to be like the superior race”. The pattern of the white man.

Section –B “The Negro and the Hegel”

`        In the second section Fanon applies Hegel’s Master- Slave dialectic. The ‘Hegelian dialectic’ offers, Fanon argues, an explanation of what distinguishes “human reality” from “natural reality”.

“Man is human only to the extent to which he tries to impose his existence on another man in order to be recognized by him”

 Black men fight for an equal place in society, The White man considers Black men as “machine-animal-men”.Fanon says, “There is always resentment in a reaction”. Nietzsche points out that in the latter Fanon remind us there is always a great deal of “resentment”.

The unequal power relations between the slave and the Master means that even if the Master had to confer upon the slave its recognition the power balance would not have shifted. Fanon says that “it is in the degree to which I go beyond my own immediate being that I apprehend the existence of the other as a natural and more than natural reality”.

Thus, in these both chapters, “Fanons describe the marginalization of Black people and colonizer White world”.

8. Way of conclusion

This final chapter discuses the escaping the prison of one’s past and one’s race.“The negro is not: Any more than the White Man”. In Fanon’s words, his writing “Exposes an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born”

Fanon throughout the book deals with the inner struggle of black when they were colony ‘the black man and language’ deals with language. Here we saw the ideal of blackness, notion of desire, and idea of identity, what is humanism? Other,

self ego, civil rights, human rights, self desire, the idea of Negritude, idea of darkness. For him Black is attitude, attitude comes from culture.

v The idea of Blackness	v The idea of identity	v Notion of desire
v The idea of Negritude	v The idea of Darkness	v O- Other
v Hate # Other	v Self-ego	v Self (play) (desire) ego ideal
	v Black-Mulatto-White

Black Skin, White Masks is certainly an amazing engagement with the fate of the black individual in society. The book deals with various questions and dilemmas faced by all humans. Its power lies in the fact that it remains surprisingly optimistic in spite of its serious subject matter. Fanon recognizes the problems faced by the former colonised and is quite aware of the psychologically draining position that he/she occupies. Yet, he focuses his attention on the debunking of whiteness as the epitome of being. He seeks to “work out new concepts” (Fanon, 1961, 255) and remains optimistic that this can indeed be done.

Ø Conclusion :-

Thus, black skin and white Mask is remain Important work to give voice to the problems of racial discrimination to black people. It attacks the notion white superiority. Black people   have desire  to became white. Because being white is means superior. So they have desire to became white. And even Mulatto, mixed race people finds problem in matching with either white or black people. They feel superior among black and inferior among white people. So it gives voice to such issues of society.

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Works Cited

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin White Mask. New York: Grove press, 1925-1961.

Parmar, Hitesh. http://hiteshparmar1234.blogspot.in/. Ed. Hitesh Parmar. 11 10 2014. 30 10 2015