Assignment
Name: Maheta Arati R.
Class: M.A.-2
Semester: 3rd
Roll No: 2
Paper: - 11(The Postcolonial Literature)
Topic: Black
skin, White Mask: Frantz Fanon,
Summary of (Chapter-1&7)
Submitted to: Department
of English
(MK Bhavnagar University)
Guided by: Dr.
Dilip Barad
Batch: 2013-15
Year:
2014-15
About the novel
Black Skin
White Masks by Franz Fanon is a sociological study of the psychology of racism
and the dehumanization inherent to colonial domination. With the
application of historical interpretation and the concomitant underlying social
indictment, the psychiatrist Franz Fanon formulated Black Skin White Masks to combat the oppression of black people and thus applied psychoanalysis and
psychoanalytic theory to explain the feelings of dependency and inadequacy that
Black people experience in a white world. That the divided self-perception of
the Black Subject who has lost his native cultural origin and embraced the culture of the Mother
Country produces inferiority complex in
the mind of the Black Subject who then will try to appropriate and imitate the
culture of the colonizer. Such behavior is more readily evident in upwardly
mobile and educated black people who can afford to acquire status symbols
within the world of the colonial acumen such as an education abroad and mastery
of the language of the colonizer the white masks.
Based upon and derived from the
concepts of the collective unconscious and collective catharsis the chapter six
‘’ The Negro and Psychopathology’ presents brief deep psychoanalysis of
colonized black people and thus proposes
the inability of black people to fit into the norms ( social, cultural, racial)
established by white society. That ‘’ a
normal Negro child having grown up in a normal Negro family will become
abnormal on the slightest contact of the white world’’. That in a white society
such an extreme psychological response originates from the unconscious and unnatural
training of black people from early childhood to associate ‘’ blackness’’
with ‘’wrongness ‘’. That such unconscious mental training o black child
is affected with comic books and cartoons. Which are cultural media that instil
and affix in the mind of the white child the society’s cultural representation
of black people as svillains? Moreover when black children are exposed to such
images of villains black people the children will experience a psychopathology (psychological
trauma) which mental wound becomes inherent to their individual behavioral make-up a part of his and her personality. That the early life suffering of
said psychology –black skin associated with villainy - creates a collective
nature among the men and women who were reduced to colonized population.
Chapter:1 ‘’The Black man and
Language’’
‘’ What I want to do is help the black man to free himself of
the arsenal of complexes that has been developed by the colonial environment.’’
“A man who has a language consequently possesses the world
expressed and implied by that language.”
― Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
In this chapter
Fanon shares his thought on how language choice reveals some of the effects
oppression has had on the black psyche. Henry points out that for black people
‘’ to speak is to exist absolutely for the other’’ meaning that the language
one chooses communicate with them requires that Henry or she ‘’assume a culture
support the weight of a civilization’’ (17). Key to this theory is the notion
that Indian the oppressed black mind there is the tendency to equate European
culture and whiteness with humanity. Thus ‘’ the Negro will become whiter
become more human as Henry masters the white man’s language’
Language essential for providing us with one element in
understanding the black man’s dimension of being for others, it being understood
that to speak is to exist absolutely for the other. The Negro possesses 1250 dimension one with his fellow
Blacks, the other with the whites. A Black man behaves differently with a white
man than he does with another black man. The problem we shall tackle in this
chapter is as follows the more the black Antillean assimilates the French
language, the whiter he gets. Ex. the closer he comes to becoming a true human
being. We are fully aware that this is one of man’s attitudes faced with being.
A man who possesses a language possesses as an indirect consequence the world
expressed and implied by this language.
Now here presents some examples of this
process that how and why this process takes place. Fanon uses the instance of
the native Caribbean’s visiting France for the first encounter with the ‘Mother
Country’ Indian this case a Martinique visiting France for the first time to
illustrate the nature of black inferiority complex. Henry states that,
‘’ Every colonized
people- Indian other words every people Indian whose soul an inferiority
complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural
originality finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing
nation; that is with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is
elevated above his jungle status In proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s
cultural standards. Henry become whiter as Henry renounces his blackness, his
jungle’’
The author goes
on to point out that school children Indian Martinique were taught to look down
on their native creole and that the middle class only used the dialect when speaking to their
servants. Some families did away with creole all together and ridiculed their
children for using it all Indian the name of perfecting their French. Fanon
reminds us that ‘’ for the Negro knows that over there Indian France
there is a stereotype of him that will fasten on to him as the pier
Indian Le Havre or Marseille. The logic of equating French culture with
progress or cultivation is peculiar. Fanon described it as ‘’ psychological
phenomenon that consists In the belief that the world will open to the extent
to which frontier are broken down. Colonialism and oppression have way of
distorting one’s notions of success and achievement to the degree that the
person will forget about his or her own self completely and attempted to become another like
‘’white’’ person.
We have said that the black man was the missing link between the
ape and man the white man of course and only on page 108 of his book does sir
Alan Burns come to the conclusion, “we are unable to except as scientifically
proven the theory that the black man is inherently inferior to the white or
that he comes from a different stock” let us add it would be easy to prove the
absurdity of such statements as“ The Bible says that the black and white races
shall be separated in heaven as they are on earth and the native admitted to
the kingdom of heaven will find themselves separated to certain of our fathers
mansions in the new Testament ” or else. We are the chosen people look at the color of our skin; others are black or yellow because of their sins. It would be easy
to prove and have acknowledged that the black man is equal to the white man but
that is not our purpose what we are striving for is to liberate the black man
from the arsenal of complexes that germinated in a colonial situation. There
are whites who interact sanely with blacks; those are precisely the cases that
will not be taken into account. It’s not because my patients’ liveries
functioning normally that his kindly are healthy. Speaking to black people in
this way is an attempt to reach down to them, to make them feel at ease to make
oneself understood and reassure them consulting physicians know this, twenty
European patients comes and go; please have a seat now what’s the trouble ?
What can I do for you?
Today? In comes a black man or an Arab! Sit down, old fellow.
Not feeling well? Where is hurting? When it’s not! If the person who speaks to
a man of colure an Arab in pidgin does not see that there is a flaw or a defect
in misbehavior, then he has never paused to reflect. They have a clear
conscience when the answer comes back along the same lines “you see, I told you
so. That’s how they are, if the opposite case, you need to retract your
pseudopodia and behave like a man. The entire
Foundation collapses. A black man who says! “I object, sir,
to you, calling me, my old fellow” now there’s something new.
“There is nothing comparable
When it
comes to the black man.
He has no culture, no civilization,
And no long historical past”.
The black man has to wear the livery the white man has
fabricated for him. Look at children’s comic books all the blacks are mouthing
the ritual, yes, boss. In films the situation is even more actuate. In France,
where go million citizens are collared. Anyone would dub the same idiocies from
America. The black man has to be portrayed in a certain way, and the same
stereotype can be found from the black man in same pitied. To speak a language
is to appropriate its world and culture. The Antillean who wants to be white
will succeed, since he will have adopted the cultural tool of language. If
should be understood that historically the black men wants to speak French
since ,if is the key to open doors which only fifty years ago still remained
closed to him.
Briefly and vaguely Fanon try to point out it
which other can’t see easily that it is larger philosophical problem at the end
of the page 22 of the book that of man’s self-love. Because of man’s extreme infatuation
with himself ‘’ Indian orders to imagine that Henry is different from other
‘animals’ ‘’. This narcissism is a mirage, but it is also at the root of black
people’s pursuit to ‘’ change who they are’’ Indian order to impress or prove
themselves to white. The solution to this problem according to fanon is ‘’man’s
surrender’’ that is his doing away with his narcissism.
Other example: of the
language problem
This time Indian
Martinique who has just returned to home from France. We see that He has
seemingly forgotten creole developed an intimate association with France
culture and become ‘’ critical of his compatriots’’ back home. Henry envisions
himself as having oracle like knowledge and comes to view life Indian his
hometown as ‘’deplorably played out’’.
This ‘’ brand newness’’ is understood to be ‘’ evidence of a
dislocation, a separation’’ (pg. - 25)’’
Then Fanon take
on the white perspective of this dilemma.
For Fanon the relationship between the two is analogous to that of the
relationship between an adult and a child Indian his observation Henry recalls
seeing many whites speak condescendingly to blacks in dialect.
‘’ A white man addressing a Negro behaves exactly like an
adult with a child and starts smirking, whispering patronizing, cozening. It is
not one white man I have a watched but hundred and I have not limited my
investigation to any one class…. (pg.-31)’’
Naturally these actions make blacks angry because they are a part of the
process of ‘’ classifying imprisoning, primitivizing and decivilizing black
peoples. Fanon believed that the ‘’ European has a fixed concept of the Negro’’
(35)
When this chapter comes near to end Fanon gave one more example of
language pathology when Henry writes statement like ‘there is no reason why
Andre Breton Should say of (Aim) Cesaire ‘
here is black man who handles the
French language as no white man today can’’ (39). For Fanon this is the
height of the insult. Henry close the chapter by saying ‘’ we should be honored the black will reproach me that white man like Briton writes such things’’ (pg. 40)
Chapter: 7 The Black man & Recognition
In this Chapter
Fanon points out the black man’s craving for recognition. Fanon was not a big
believer of Adler and Hegel but nonetheless Henry used their ideas as a jumping
off point to understand the black from his home island of Martinique. Adler:
you understand someone not through his words and actions but through the end
Henry aims to achieve. Know that and all his thought and actions fall into
place – even if Henry is a madman.
In
Martinique black people put each other down to feel good about themselves. So
mistakes in your work are remembered and repeated not because they are so
terrible Indian themselves but because it allows others to put you down so they
can feel better about themselves.
I am Narcissus, and I
want to see reflected in the eyes of the other an image of myself that
Satisfies me.
If you find something
unpleasant in those eyes, then the person must be “a real idiot”,
Someone who has to be put
in his place by having his mistake recounted. Something you do not do to those
who like you, your “courtiers”.
The Martinicans are
hungry for reassurance. They want their wishful thinking to be recognized….
Each and every one of them constitutes an isolated, arid, assertive atom…
Each
of them wants to be, wants to flaunt him.
“I
am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the
earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos -- and the white man, however
intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs
from the Congo. I am black, not because of a curse, but because my skin has
been able to capture all the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a drop of sun under the
earth.”― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
What drives this is an
inferiority complex. Quoting from an old Spanish play by Andres deClaramonte
that sounds like it was written yesterday, Fanon shows that it goes back 400
years.
The fault is not in the
souls of black people but comes from white rule, which forces blacks to live in
a world where their human worth is questioned. But since blacks are not in a
position to put down white people, they prove their worth by putting down each
other.
Hegel: our sense of
self-worth and even reality comes from others, particularly from how they react
to our actions
So blacks in America,
having had to fight for equal rights against whites, have a firm sense of
themselves. Seeing the hatred in the eyes of white people and hearing the names
they were called and knowing the body count, they fought for an equal place in
society. The blacks in Martinique were not so fortunate. They never fought for
anything – except for the white man in wars overseas. Whites freed the slaves
on their own. And instead of mean looks and mean words and bodies hanging from
trees like in America, whites in Martinique
Show “nothing but
indifference or paternalistic curiosity” – while looking down on blacks all the
same. IN place of honest hatred was a false smile. Which gave blacks nothing to
fight against? All they could do was bite their tongue and smile back giving them a weaker sense of themselves
while still remaining unequal.
Ø
Some
quotations from the book which clears the idea
“The Negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man
enslaved by his superiority alike behaves in accordance with a neurotic
orientation.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Mask
“As I begin to recognize that the Negro is the symbol of sin, I catch myself hating the Negro. But then
I recognise that I am a
Negro. There are two ways out of this conflict. Either I ask others to pay no
attention to my skin, or else I want them to be aware of it. I try then to find
value for what is bad--since I have unthinkingly conceded that the black man is
the colour of evil. In order to terminate this neurotic situation, in which I
am compelled to choose an unhealthy, conflictual solution, fed on fantasies,
hostile, inhuman in short, I have only one solution: to rise above this absurd
drama that others have staged around me, to reject the two terms that are
equally unacceptable, and through one human being, to reach out for the
universal. When the Negro dives--in other words, goes under--something
remarkable occurs.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black
Skin, White Masks
Conclusion
So in this whole book
Fanon talks about the Black people’s experience in the white world. That how
they are insulted and how the white peoples always try to give them the feeling
of inferiority in front of them s(white people).
