Critical Analysis on "Black Skin, White Masks."
Name: Bharti Dharaiya
M.A English semester: 3
Roll no: 03
Batch: 2019 - 2021
Enrollment No: 2069108420190008
Email id: bhartidharaiya123@gmail.com
Submitted to: Smt. S. B Gardi, Department of English, MKBU
Paper no- 12 English Language Teaching-1
Topic : Critical Analysis Black Skin, White Masks.
Introduction :
"There is but one destiny for the black man. And it is white."
Fanon states that he wishes he had written his book three years previously, but that he was too angry to do so. He then lays out the "double narcissism" of the relationship between white and black people, who are locked into their identities and into their relationship to one another.
Fanon refers primarily in the text to black men and white men. Although he uses "man" as a generic term for humans, he also generally means male-identified people.
👉Chapter 1 of Frantz Fanon's " Skin, White Masks " :
"There is but one destiny for the black man. And it is white."
Fanon explores the relationship between race, language, and culture. For Fanon, language provides entry into a culture, so when someone speaks French, they are taking on the French culture. Black people who have been told they are inferior may develop a kind of inferiority complex and want to become “superior” by becoming white.
Fanon describes the "extraordinary power in the possession of a language." This is that someone with access to a language (like French) possesses access to the world "expressed and implied by this language." Someone who speaks French has access to the world of the French. An Antillean like Fanon becomes "whiter" by speaking the language of the white colonizers. He goes further, stating that all colonized people position themselves in relation to the "civilizing language."
This is why Fanon says that people like him become alienated. They are trapped between communities that reject them or they have rejected, and find a home nowhere.
👉Chapter 2 of Frantz Fanon's " Black Skin, White Masks" (1952): " The Woman colour and the White Man" ( men of colour and white women will be next week) :
"All colonized people ... position themselves in relation to the civilizing language."
The second chapter, which are about interracial relationships between Black and white people.Black men may consider white women gatekeepers to culture, and marrying a white woman provides a feeling of having married all the beauty, education, and wealth that whiteness stands for in racist societies.
The point of Fanon's discussions of the book is to show that black women have become entranced by a doomed desire to gain whiteness.
They reject their blackness and that of their fellows, but they can never be accepted into white society. This is made plain in I Am a Martinican Woman when the protagonist's white lover leaves her. He provides instructions on how to raise his "superior" (because whiter) son. Fanon shows that black society, in this way, is directed always at the white for guidance, and this guidance is a cruel trap.
👉Chapter 3 of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks" ( 1952) : "The Man of colour and the White Woman" :
"There is nothing more sensational than a black man speaking correctly ... he is appropriating the white world."
Black people can never leave behind the fact of their Blackness, fleeing from their race is also fleeing from themselves. This leads to a loss of a sense of self and in turn a loss of agency to act in the world.
Fanon makes the case that the male protagonist of the novel is suffering from a neurosis. The point is to show that Jean is a normal human being, with a normal human neurosis. He is not the way he is because of his race.
Fanon wishes to show how racism interacts with other factors to produce behaviors and neuroses. In the case of Jean, his personality and his desires interact with racist society to produce his illness.
👉Chapter 4 : of Frantz Fanon's book "Black Skin White Masks" " The So - called Dependency Complex of the Colonized" :
"One is white, so one is rich, so one is handsome, so one is intelligent."
Fanon develops this analysis of the inferiority complex of Black people and the impossibility of leaving behind the fact of being Black. For Fanon, it is important to realize that Black people do not naturally feel they are inferior.
Fanon points out that poor South African whites hate black people for no more complicated reason than that South Africa is governed by a racist structure. Not only that, but so does Europe itself. This is in contrast to Mannoni stating, "France is unquestionably one of the least racialist countries." Mannoni claims that the inferiority complex is found in those who are a racial minority. Fanon rubbishes this by pointing out that in South Africa, blacks are by far the majority.
👉Chapter 5 of Frantz Fanon's book" Black Skin, White Masks" (1952) : " The Lived Experience of the Black Man" :
"The 'Negro' is the savage, whereas the student is civilized."
In this chapter Fanon runs through a great many instances of racism. The intention of this is to show how endemic racist thinking is, and how impossible it is for the subject of racism to escape.
Fanon notes how "whereas I was prepared to forget, to forgive, and to love," he was prevented from doing any of these things by the white world—which is the "only decent one." As the white world demands a man "behave like a man," it also demands Fanon and other black men "behave like a Negro." Fanon refuses. He wishes instead to assert himself as a "BLACK MAN."
The existence of black doctors and teachers does not counteract this belief, and the respectability of such professionals of color rests on shaky ground.
Fanon contends on the other hand that Jewish people are only judged as such if one knows that they are Jewish, because there is no external physical determination.
👉Chapter 6 of Frantz Fanon's " Black Skin, White Masks" (1952) : "The Black Man and Psychopathology" :
This chapter leans most heavily on the psychoanalytic method. This is why it begins with a discussion of the basis of psychoanalytic theory in the analysis of the family unit. As before, Frantz Fanon is insistent that such an approach must consider race a factor.
In no way must my color be felt as a stain. Fanon uses this in a clever manner. He points out, very accurately, that the legacy of slavery and colonialism was just such a collective unconscious among black people. He even points to cultural forms, like comic books, myths, and legends, given to children as the vector through which these unconscious assumptions about race are spread.
👉Chapter 7 of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks" (1952) : " The Black Man and Recognition" :
In this chapter, Fanon does this because it had been noted that black people had an "inferiority complex" concerning white people. While Fanon accepts this, he thinks, and tries to demonstrate, that Adlerian methods do not quite fit the example he has in mind. Again, Fanon wants to situate mental disorders in specific social contexts.
The black person is defined by the association with sexuality. This is why black people are castrated as a punishment. This is linked to the idea that black men are "animals." They are believed to be nothing but their base sexual impulses and raw physical power.
The end of the world" as used here means the end of white rule. Fanon has made the case that the colonizers shaped the world in their own image.
Conclusion :
Thus, Fanon referred to Black and white People in society. How white people are ruled to the black people.
References :
Black Skin, White Masks Introduction Summary: Course Hero, https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Black-Skin-White-Masks/introduction-summary/, December 06, 2020
Comments
Post a Comment