CPLT 110 Literary Analysis and Criticism Final Paper Assignment

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Frmtz Fanon / 211

to the Antilleans. The Ne o is c ,om~"son . There is the first truth. He

w o ~ f i k a t is, he is constantly preoccupied with

THE NEGRO self-evaluation and with the ego-ideal. Whenever he comes into contact with someone else, the question of

AND RECOGNITION value, of merit, arises. The Antillem have no inherent values of their own, they are always contingent on the presence of The Other. The question is always whether

A. The Negro and Adh' he is less intelligent than I, blacker than I, less respect- From whatever direction one approaches the analysis able than I. Every position of one's own, every effort at

p+ogenic conditions, one very soon hds One- security, is based on relations of dependence, with the self in the presence of the following phenomenon: The - diminution of the other. It is the wreckage of what sur- whole picture of the neurosis, as well as its s ~ ~ P ~ ~ ~ ~ 7 rounds me that provides the foundation for my virility. emerges as under the iduenoe of some goal, indeed as I should like to suggest an experiment to any Marti- projehons of &is goal. Therefore one can ascribe the charae nican who reads this book: Find the most "comparative" ter of a formative cause to this final goal, the quality of a street in Fort-de-France. Rue Schoelcher, rue victor- principle of orientation, of arrangement, of ~ ~ ~ r d h a ~ ~ ~ . Hugo--certainly not rue Franqois-Arago. The Martinican T~,, to undersmd the "meaning" and the direction of who agrees to make this experiment will share my opinion healthy manifestations, and YOU will immediately come face precisely insofar as he can objectively endue seeing him- to face with a chaotic throng of tendencis, of impulses, of

and of anomalies, bound to discourage some self stripped naked. An Antillean who meets an acquaint-

and to arouse * others the rash resolve to penetrate the ance for the fist time after five or six years' absence greets shadows at all costs, even at the risk of finding * the end him with aggression. This is because in the past each had that nothing h a been gained, or that what has been gained a fixed position. NOW the inferior thinks that he has ac- is illusory. ~ f , on the other hand, one accepts the hypothesir worth . . . and the superior is determined to con- of a ha] goal or of a causal finality, one sees the shadows serve the old hierarchy. "You haven't changed a bit . . , dissolve at once and we can read the soul of the patient like still as stupid as ever." the pages of a book.' I have known some, physicians and dentists, who have

~t is on the basis of similar theoretical positions that7 gone on filling their heads with mistakes in judgment made fifteen years before. It is not so much concephal errors as "Creolisms" with which the dangerous man is belabored. He was put in his place once and for all: nothing to be done about it. The Antillean is character-

212 1 ~ I a c k Skin, White Masks Frantz Fanon / 213

ized by his desire to dominate the other. His line of Not because The Other is the ultimate objective of his orientation runs through the other. I t is always a question action in the sense of COmmunication between people that of the subject; one never even thinks of the object. I Adler describes? but, more primitively, because i t is q to read admiration in the eyes of the other, and if, The Other who corroborates him in his search for unluckily, those eyes show me an u.npleasant reflection? I find that mirror flawed: Unquestionably that other one Now that we have marked out the Adlerian line of is a fool. I do not try to be naked in the sight of the object- orientation of the Antillean, ow task is to look for its The object is denied in terms of individuality and liberty. The object is an instrument. It should enable me to realize Here the difficulties begin. In effect, Adler has created my subjective security. I consider myself fuElled (the a ~ s ~ c h o l o g ~ of the individual. We have jut seen that wish for plenitude) and I recognize no division. The the feeling of inferiority is an h t iuean characteristic. ~t Other comes on to the stage only in order to furnish it- is not just this or that htillean who embodies the neu- I am the Hero. Applaud or condemn, it makes no differ- rOtic formation? but htilleans. Antiflean society is a ence to me, 1 am the center of attention. If the other seeks neurotic society, a society of " c ~ m ~ a r i s ~ ~ . " Hence we are to make me uneasy with his wish to have value (his driven from h e individual back to the social structure. fiction), I simply banish him without a trial. He ceases If there is a taint, it lies not in the iou lW of the individual to exist. I don't want to hear .about that fellow. I do not but rather in that of the environment. wish to experience the impact of the object. Contact with The Martinican is and is not a neurotic. 1f we were the object means conflict. 1 am Narcissus, and what I in applying the conc~usions of the Adlerian school, want to see in the eyes of others is a reflection that pleases we should say that the Negro is seeking to protest against me. Therefore, in any given group (environment) in the inferiority that he feels historically. Since in all periods. Martinique, one finds the man on top, the c o u . that sur- the Negro bas been an inferior, he attempts to react rounds him, the in-betweem (who are waiting for some- with a superiority complex. And this is indeed what comes thing better), and the losers. These last are slaughtered out of Brachfeld's book. Discussing the feeling of racial . without mercy. One can imagine the temperame that inferiority, Brachfeld quotes a Spanish play by Andr& de prevails in that jungle. There is no Way out of it. Claamunte, El ualknte negro de Fhdres. This play

Me, nothing but me. makes clear that the inferiority of the Negro does not The Martinicans are greedy for security- They want to date from this century, since De Claramunte was a con-

the acceptance of their fiction. They want to be temporary of Lope de Vega: recognized in their quest for manhood. They want to make Only the color of his skin there lacked an appearance. Each one of them is an isolated, sterile, mat he should be a man of gentle blood. salient atom .with sharply defined rights of passage, each one of them h. Each one of them wants to be? to 'emerge. And the Negro, Juan de MCrida, says this:

Everything that an Antillean does is done for The Other. 2. In Understanding ~ u m a n Nature.

216 / Black Skin, White Masks

The Martinican is a man crucified. The environment that has shaped him (but that he has not shaped) has horribly drawn and quartered him; and he feeds this cul- tural environment with his blood and his essences. Now, the blood of Negroes is a manure prized by experts.

If I were an Adlerian, then, having established the fact that my friend had fulfilled in a dream his wish to become white-that is, to be a man-I would show him that his neurosis, his psychic instability, the rupture of his ego arose out of this governing fiction, and I would say to him: "M. Mannoni has very ably described this phenomenon in the Malagasy. Look here: I tbink you simply have to resign yourself to remaining in the place that has been assigned to you."

Certainly not1 I will not say that at dl I will tell him, "The environment, society are responsible for your de- lusion." Once that has been said, the rest will foUow of itself, and what that is we know. The end of the world.

I wonder sometimes whether school inspectors and government functionaries are aware of the role they play in the colonies. For twenty years they poured every effort into programs that would make the Negro a white man. In the end, they dropped him and told him, "You have an indisputable complex of dependence on the white man."

B. The Negro and Hegel Self-cunsciousness ertsts in itself and for itself, in that and

by the fact that it exists for another self-conrciozcsness; that b to say, it is only by being acknowledged or recognized.

-Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind

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. As long as he has not been effectively

Frantz Fanon / 217

recognized by the other, that other will remain the theme of his actions. I t is on that other being, on recognition by that other being, that his own human worth and reality depend. It is that other being in whom the mean- ing of his life is condensed.

There is not an open conflict between white and black. One day the White Master, without conflict, recognized the Negro slave.

But the former slave wants to make himself recognized. At the foundation of Hegelian dialectic there is an

absolute reciprocity which must be emphasized. 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. If I close the circuit, if I prevent the accomplishment of movement in two direc- tions, I keep the other within himself. Ultimately, I deprive him even of this being-for-itself.

I The only means of breaking this vicious circle that throws me back on myself is to restore to the other, through mediation and recognition, his human reality, which is different from natural reality. The other has to perform the same operation. "Action from one side only would be useless, because what is to happen can only be brought about by means of both.. . . ."; "they recognize themselves as mutually recognizing each other.'

In its immediacy, mnsciousness of self is simple being- for-itself. In order to win the certainty of oneself, the in- corporation of the concept of recognition is essential. Similarly, the other is waiting for recognition by US, in order to burgeon into the universal consciousness of self. Each consciousness of self is in quest of absoluteness. It wants to be recognized as a primal value without reference

4. 6. W. F. Hegel, The ~ h e k n n e n o l o ~ ~ of Mind, trans. by J. B. Baillie, 2nd rev. d. (London, AUen h Unwin, 1Q49), pp. 230,231.

218 1 B k k Skin, White Masks Frantz Fanon / 219

to life, as a transformation of subjective certainty ( G d - The other, however, can recognize me without shggle: heit) into objective truth ( WahrGt). 'The individual, who has not staked his life, may, no men it encounters resistance from the other, self- doubt, be recognized as a person, but he has not attained

consciousness undergoes the experience of desire-the the truth of &is recognition as an independent selfmcon- first milestone on the road that leads to the dignity of the

Self-consciousness accepts the risk of its Me, and Historically, the Negro steeped in &e inessentiality of consequently it threatens the other in his physical being. servitude was set free by his master. He did not fight for " ~ t is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; only &us is it tried and proved that the essential nature of self- Out of slavery the Negro burst into the lists where consciousness is not bare existence, is not the merely im- his masters stood. Like those servants who are allowed mediate form in which it at first makes its appearance, is once every Year to dance in the drawing room, the Negro not its mere absorption in the expanse of life."' is looking for a prop. The Negro has not become a master.

When there are no longer slaves, there are no longer

The N e ~ o is a slave who has been allowed to assume the attitude of a master.

The white man is a master who has allowed his slaves to eat at his table.

soon as I &sire I am asking to be considered. 1 am not merely here-and-now, sealed into wgness . I am for somewhere else and for something else. I dm-~and that notice be taken of my negating activity insofar as I Pursue something other than life; insofar as I do battle for the creation of a human world-that is, of a world of reci- Since then, M. Deshaies has taken the question of suicide as the

subject of his thesis. He demonstrates that the studies by Jaensch, procal recognitions. who contrasted the disintegrated-personality "type" (blue eyes,

He who is reluctant to recognize me opposes n ~ e - 1x1 white skin) to the integrated-personality "typen (brown eyes and a savage I am willing to accept convulsions of sk i . ) , are predominantly specious. death, invincible dissolution, but also the possibility of According to Durkheim, Jews never committed suicide. N~~ it

is the Negroes. Very well: '"The Detroit municipal hospital found that 16-68 of its suicide cases were Negroes, although the proportion of Negroes in the total population is only 7.6%. In Cincinnati, the number of Negro suicides is more than double that of whites; this may result In part from the amazing sexual disparity among Negro suicides: 358 women against 76 men." (Gabriel Deshaies, p s y c b ~ - ogie du suicide, note 23.)

7. Hegel, op. cit., p. 233.

2 ~ ) I Black Skin, White Masks Frantz Fanon 1 221

one day a good white master who had influence said But the Negro ~ O W S nothing of the cost of freedom,

to his friends, "Let's be nice to the niggers. . . ." for he has not fought for it. From ti*e to time he has The masters argued, for after all it was not an white

fought for Liberty and Justice, but these were & r a y s easy thing, but then they decided to promote the mtchine- liberty and white justice; that is, values secreted

animal-men to the supreme rank of men. by masters. The former slave, who can find in

Shoey shall no longer exist on French soil- memory no trace of the struggle for liberty or of that

The upheaval reached the Negroes from without. The anguish of liberty of which Kierkegaard s p e h , sits

black man was acted upon. Values that had not been moved before the young white man singing a d dancing

created by his actions, values that had not been born of on the tightrope of existence.

the systolic tide of his blood, danced in a hued whirl When it does happen that the Negro looks fiercely at

round him. The upheaval did not make a difference in the the white man, the white man tells him: "Brother, there

Negro. He went from one way of life to another, but not is no difference between us." And yet the &go bkmut from one life to another. Just as when one tells a n~uch that there is a difference. He wants it. He wants the white

man to turn on him and shout: "Damn nigger." Then he improved patient that in a few days he will be discharged - from the hospital, he thereupon suffers a relapse, so the would have that unique chance-to "show them, . , : -0uncement of the liberation of the black slaves pr* But most often there is but duced psychoses and sudden deaths. ence, or a paternahtic curiosity.

~t is not an announcement that one hears twice in a The former slave needs a chdenge to his humanity, l i febe. The black man contented himself with thanking he Wmt.3 a CO&C~, a riot. But it i s too late: The French

the white man, and the most forceful proof of the fact is Negro is doomed to bite himself and jw to bite, I say

the impressive number of statues erected all over France French Negro,* for the American Negro b c a t in and the colonies to show white France stroking the lclnky a different play. In the United States, the Negro bads hair of this nice Negro whose chains had just been and is battled. There are laws that, little by little, are

invalidated under the Constitution. There me other lam

"say thank you to the nice man," the mother tells her that forbid certain forms of di~crid111~ti~~. h d we can little boy . . . but we know that often the little boy is be s u e that nothing is going to be given free.

There is war, there are defeats, trucer, victories.

In fie same way, the slave hen is in no way identifiable with The white man, in the capacity of master: said to the the slave who loses himself in the object and finds in hir: work the

Negro, "From now on you are free." source of his liberation.

8. I hope I have shown that here the master differs basically from the master described by Hegel. For Hegel there is reciprocity; here the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition but work.

222 / Black Skin, Whi te Masks

"The twelve ÿ ill ion black voicesy* howled against the curtain of the sky. Torn from end to end, marked with the gashes of teeth biting into the belly of interdiction, the curtain fell like a burst balloon.

On the field of battle, its four comers marked by the scores of Negroes hanged by their testicles, a monument is Gowly being built that promises to be majestic. - .'+I+ at the top of this monument, I can aheady see a white man and a black man hand in hand. The social reuolution . . . mn1u)t

F Q ~ the French Negro the situation is unbearable. Un- draw its poetry from the past, but able ever to be sure whether the white man considers him from the future. It cannot begin cons~iousness in-itself-for-itself, he must forever absorb with itself before it has stripped it- himself in uncovering resistance, opposition, challenge. self of all its superstitions c0fu:ming

This is what emerges from some of the passages of the - the past. Earlier reuolutions relied on book that Mounier has devoted to Africa.l" The young rm.?mories out of world history in order Negroes whom he knew there sought to maintain their to dmg themselues against thefr own alterity. Alterity of rupture, of conflict, of battle.

content. In order to find their own content, the reuolutwns o f the nine-

The self takes its place by opposing itself, Fichte said. teenth century haue to let the dead bury the dead. Before, the expression

I said in my introduction that man is a yes. 1 will n ~ e r '

exceeded the content; now, the con- stop reiterating that. tent exceeds the expression.

Yes to life. Yes to love. Yes to generosity. -lG.~l Mum, The Eighteenth Brumaire, But man is also a no. No to scorn of man. No to deg-

radation of man. N o to exploitation of man. No to the butchery of what is most human in man: freedom. I can already see the faces of all those who will ask

Man's behavior is not only reactional. And there is me to be precise on this or that point, to denounce this always resentment in a reaction. Nietzsche had already or that mode of conduct. pointed that out in The Will to Power. I t is obvious-and I will never weary of repeating this

To educate man to be crctional, preserving in all his -that the quest for disalienation by a doctor of medicine relations his respect for the basic values that constitute l ~ ~ m in Guadeloupe can be understood only by recognizing a human world, is the prime task of him who, having motivations badcally different from those of the Negro taken thought, prepares to act. laborer building the port facilities in Abidjan. rn first

9. In English in the original. (Translator's note. ) case, the alienation is of an almost intellectual character,

10. Emmanuel Mounier, L'dueil de Z'Afrique noire (Paris, ~ d i - tions du Seuil, 1948).