Topic- summery of Chapter 1& 7 OF Black Skin White Mask by- Fanon paper-11

                   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).