Paper Nb. : 11 - postcolonial literature
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Black Skin, White Masks is a 1952 book by Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist and intellectual from Martinique. The book is written in the style of auto-theory, in which Fanon shares his own experiences in addition to presenting a historical critique of the effects of racism and dehumanization, inherent in situations of colonial domination, on the human psyche.
Black Skin, White Masks applies historical interpretation, and the concomitant underlying social indictment, to understand the complex ways in which identity, particularly Blackness is constructed and produced. In the book, he applies psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory to explain the feelings of dependency and inadequacy that black people might experience. 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 an 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 ecumene, 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 sixth chapter, "The Negro and Psychopathology", presents brief, deep psychoanalyses 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 of black children is effected with comic books and cartoons, which are cultural media that instil and affix, in the mind of the white child, the society's cultural representations of black people as villains. Moreover, when black children are exposed to such images of villainous 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 psychopathology – black skin associated with villainy – creates a collective nature among the men and women who were reduced to colonized populations.
Women of Colour and White Men; Men of colour and White Women:
Women of colour and White man:
When women of colour go after white men and put down men of their own colour Fanon says the cause is just what many of us suspect: internalized racism. Nor do these women truly love these white men they just love their colour. They go with them not out love but to deal with their own hang-ups about race.
Fanon: It is because the black woman feels inferior that she aspires to gain admittance to the white world.
Secretly she wants to be white. Marrying white is her way of doing this. She looks up to white people and looks down on black people. Whites represent wealth, beauty, intelligence and virtue; blacks, on the other hand, are “niggers”’ something to escape, to be saved from, something not to be. So they want to marry a white man even though they know full well that very few will marry them.
Their racism is so profound that it blinds them to good black men. They will say black men lack refinement and turn away black men more refined than them. They will say black men are ugly- and grow impatient with you if you point out good looking black men.
For Fanon, the acts of love & admiration are directly tied to who and what we value. He states, “authentic love..entails the mobilization of psychic drives basically freed of unconscious conflicts” (41). In other words, you can’t seek to love unless I had fully ridden myself of my inferiority complex. In the case of blacks, this becomes hindrance because, as Fanon believes, the inferiority complex is what the black world view is mainly comprised of.
Fanon takes as his examples three women: Mayotte of Martinique and Nini and Dedee of Senegal. Mayotte is Mayotte Capecia who wrote a book about her life; Nini and Dedee are characters from “Nini” (1954), a story by Abdoulaye Sadji. All three are part white which makes them determined not to “slip back among the ‘nigger’ rabble”. (There was no the One Drop Rule.)
Nini is a silly typist. A man who is an accountant with the waterways company proposes marriage. She cannot believe it. What nerve this man has! There is talk of getting him fired. In the end they have the police tell him to stop his “morbid insanities”. Why? Because he is black and she is half white. He has offended her “white girl’s” honour.
Meanwhile another man with a good government job proposes to Dedee but this time it is a dream come true. Why? Because he is white:
Gone was the psychological depreciation, the feeling of debasement, and its corollary of never being able to reach the light. Overnight the mulatto girl had gone from the rank of slave to that of master. … She was entering the white world.
But a white man cannot make you white, not even in effect: Mayotte, the third woman, had an affair with a married white man. One time she asked him to take her to the white side of town. He does, taking her to a friend’s house for the evening. But the white women there made her feel so out of place, so unworthy of him, that she never went back to the white side again.
Name: Zala Namrataba
Kishorsinh
Roll No. : 20
Year: 2016-18
M.A Semester: 3
Paper No. : (11)
Postcolonial literature
Email Id: namratazala2707@gmail.com
Assignment Topic: Women
of Colour and White Men; Men of colour and White Women
Submitted to:
smt.S.B.Gardi,
Department Of English,
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University,
Bhavnagar, Gujarat-364001.
Women of Colour and
White Men; Men of colour and White Women
Introduction
about writer:
Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist, philosopher,
revolutionary, and author from Martinique. He was influential in the field of
post-colonial studies and was perhaps the pre-eminent thinker of the 20th
century on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization.
His works have inspired anti-colonial liberation movements for more than four
decades.
Introduction
of White Skin Black Mask:
Black Skin, White Masks is a 1952 book by Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist and intellectual from Martinique. The book is written in the style of auto-theory, in which Fanon shares his own experiences in addition to presenting a historical critique of the effects of racism and dehumanization, inherent in situations of colonial domination, on the human psyche.
Black Skin, White Masks applies historical interpretation, and the concomitant underlying social indictment, to understand the complex ways in which identity, particularly Blackness is constructed and produced. In the book, he applies psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory to explain the feelings of dependency and inadequacy that black people might experience. 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 an 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 ecumene, 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 sixth chapter, "The Negro and Psychopathology", presents brief, deep psychoanalyses 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 of black children is effected with comic books and cartoons, which are cultural media that instil and affix, in the mind of the white child, the society's cultural representations of black people as villains. Moreover, when black children are exposed to such images of villainous 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 psychopathology – black skin associated with villainy – creates a collective nature among the men and women who were reduced to colonized populations.
Women of Colour and White Men; Men of colour and White Women:
Quotes from Black Skin, White...
“Sometimes people hold
a core belief that is very strong. When they are
presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new
evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is
extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it
is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize,
ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.” — 796 likes
presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new
evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is
extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it
is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize,
ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.” — 796 likes
“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.”
— 172 likes
Women of colour and White man:
When women of colour go after white men and put down men of their own colour Fanon says the cause is just what many of us suspect: internalized racism. Nor do these women truly love these white men they just love their colour. They go with them not out love but to deal with their own hang-ups about race.
Fanon: It is because the black woman feels inferior that she aspires to gain admittance to the white world.
Secretly she wants to be white. Marrying white is her way of doing this. She looks up to white people and looks down on black people. Whites represent wealth, beauty, intelligence and virtue; blacks, on the other hand, are “niggers”’ something to escape, to be saved from, something not to be. So they want to marry a white man even though they know full well that very few will marry them.
Their racism is so profound that it blinds them to good black men. They will say black men lack refinement and turn away black men more refined than them. They will say black men are ugly- and grow impatient with you if you point out good looking black men.
For Fanon, the acts of love & admiration are directly tied to who and what we value. He states, “authentic love..entails the mobilization of psychic drives basically freed of unconscious conflicts” (41). In other words, you can’t seek to love unless I had fully ridden myself of my inferiority complex. In the case of blacks, this becomes hindrance because, as Fanon believes, the inferiority complex is what the black world view is mainly comprised of.
Fanon takes as his examples three women: Mayotte of Martinique and Nini and Dedee of Senegal. Mayotte is Mayotte Capecia who wrote a book about her life; Nini and Dedee are characters from “Nini” (1954), a story by Abdoulaye Sadji. All three are part white which makes them determined not to “slip back among the ‘nigger’ rabble”. (There was no the One Drop Rule.)
Nini is a silly typist. A man who is an accountant with the waterways company proposes marriage. She cannot believe it. What nerve this man has! There is talk of getting him fired. In the end they have the police tell him to stop his “morbid insanities”. Why? Because he is black and she is half white. He has offended her “white girl’s” honour.
Meanwhile another man with a good government job proposes to Dedee but this time it is a dream come true. Why? Because he is white:
Gone was the psychological depreciation, the feeling of debasement, and its corollary of never being able to reach the light. Overnight the mulatto girl had gone from the rank of slave to that of master. … She was entering the white world.
But a white man cannot make you white, not even in effect: Mayotte, the third woman, had an affair with a married white man. One time she asked him to take her to the white side of town. He does, taking her to a friend’s house for the evening. But the white women there made her feel so out of place, so unworthy of him, that she never went back to the white side again.
Man
of colour and the white woman:
This Chapter from Fanon covers the topic of
self alienation that he feels his fellow black men
put themselves through when trying to assimilate with the “White
mans world”. He picked the controversial topic of interracial relationships
that is even till this day is sometimes looked down upon in certain parts of
the country to show what lengths people are willing to go to feel normal.
This sense or needing to feel like one belongs is something that everyone
goes through in their lifetime. However when it came to marriage or
just intimate race relations in general the
biggest taboo was for a black male to be with a White female. At
first Fanon explains that the desire to be with a white woman or
touch white flesh is something that is thrusted upon the black
man due to all those years of the whites being unattainable .
However the more pressing and deeper issue is brought to light
when he examines one male in particular and his quest to marry a white woman
whom he loves. When he became puzzled with the question of if he
should and deserve the right to ask for her hand in marriage, his white
friend reassures him that there is nothing black about him and that he
is basically a French man that is just very very dark, instead of
black so there is nothing to worry about. His rationalization that
it was okay for him to get married with a white female
just because he was raised around whites so he seemed “less
black” was something that Fanon and the man took much offense to.
What i found very interesting is that the Female that he was planing on
marrying expressed her love and genuine feelings back towards him but
instead of taking them and marrying her at the expense of his pride,
he didn’t. He instead went into self imposed isolation to
see how truly wrong it would be to accept the reasoning
that because he isn’t a real black man (savage like)
that he was able to marry this woman. Fanon explains that the feeling of
self inflicted alienation is a result to wanting to
be accepted for what he is not viewed as a mistake or a
stain on white skin but, as a proud and Black male. Its these
types of prejudices that make him not want to join a white mans world but in a
sense make an even playing ground for all.
Works Cited
abagond. https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/fanon-the-woman-of-colour-and-the-white-man/.
25 10 2017
<https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/fanon-the-woman-of-colour-and-the-white-man/>.
currentsoc6. https://currentsoc6.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/black-skin-white-masks-chapter-3/.
25 10 2017
<https://currentsoc6.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/black-skin-white-masks-chapter-3/>.
four, group. https://soc240group4.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/frantz-fanon-chapter-2-the-woman-of-color-and-the-white-man/.
25 10 2017
<https://soc240group4.wordpress.com/2012/11/06/frantz-fanon-chapter-2-the-woman-of-color-and-the-white-man/>.
Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/274392.Black_Skin_White_Masks.
25 10 2017 <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/274392.Black_Skin_White_Masks>.
Wikipedia. 25 10 2017.
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