Black Skin White Mask general overview paper no-11

Name: Gohil Umaba B

Sem: 3

Roll No: 16

Paper No : 11 post colonial litreature

Topic: Black Skin White Mask general overview

Email id : umabagohil123@ Gmail.com

Submitted by: Smt S.B.Gardi maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar university

to evaluate my assignment click here

Black Skin White Mask general overview

“Balck Skin White Mask” (1952) is a book about the mindset or psychology of racism by Frantz Fanon, a Martinican psychiatrist and black, post-colonialist thinker. The book looks at what goes through the minds of blacks and whites under the conditions of white rule and the strange effects that has, especially on black people.

The book started out as his doctoral thesis that he wrote to get his degree in psychiatry. So it is written for white French psychiatrists and speaks mainly about Martinique and France in the early 1950s.

That makes it a hard book for the general reader to understand. Every now and then he says something wow that keeps you going, but it requires rereading and a good deal of thought to understand a given chapter. And even then you do not fully understand it – you just understand it better.

Chapter One and two : The Negro & Language

In this chapter, Fanon shares his thoughts on how langauge choice reveals some of the effects oppression has had on the black psyche. He points out that, for black people, "to speak is to exist absolutely for the other" meaning that the language one chooses to communicate with requires that he or she "assume a culture, support the weight of a civilization" . Key to this theory is the notion that, in 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 he masters the white man's language".

Near the end of the chapter, Fanon provides us with one more example of language pathology when he states that "there is no reason why Andre Breton should say of , 'Here is a black man who handles the French language as no white man today can". For Fanon, this is the height of insult. He closes the chapter by saying, "we should be honored, the blacks will reproach me, that a white man like Breton writes such things".

Chapter 3 The 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.

Chapter 4 : The So-Called Dependency Complex of Colonized Peoples

Chapter four encompasses Fanon' thoughts surrounding the work of one of his contemporaries, Octave Mannoni, specifically, a work entitled "Prospero and Caliban; Psychology of Colonization". Fanon states that he has chosen the author's work because it emphasizes the problem of "exhaustive" studies on the effects of colonialism tat still cannot manage to provide any real insights into the phenomenon.

Fanon is primarily concerned with the lack of subjectivity displayed by Mannoni, which he believes is responsible for the scholar's assumption that, "the inferiority complex [is] something that antedates colonization" or put more simply, that inferiority complexes are somehow inherent to "primitive" or uncivilized peoples.

Finally, Fanon ends the chapter by rephrasing his point: that inferiority complexes in people of color are the result of the white man's arrival and that "Mannoni lacks the slightest basis in which to ground any conclusion applicable to the situation, the problems, or the potentialities of the [Africans] in the present time".

Chapter 5 The Lived Experience of the Black Man

The following is based on Chapter 5 of Frantz Fanon’s book “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952): “The Lived Experience of the Black Man”:

Frantz Fanon wants to be a man. But in the white world in which he lives his skin colour becomes everything, more important than even his education and achievements. While his neighbour or his cousin might hate him for good reason, white people hate him without even getting to know him. They are irrational.

He is seen not as Dr Fanon but as a black man who is a doctor. Everyone is watching and waiting for him to make a mistake.

I was walled in: neither my refined manners nor my literary knowledge nor my understanding of the quantum theory could find favor.

Chapter 6 Fanon: The Black Man and Psychophology

The following is based on Chapter 6 of Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952): “The Black Man and Psychopathology”:

Why white people are so afraid of black men:

1. Black men are seen as being way less moral.

2. White men fear they will take white women from them.

Take the last one first:

White men think that black men have bigger penises. They think that once a white woman sleeps with a black man she will never want a white man again: if it is not for their size then it is because black men are so much better in bed.

None of this is based on fact. According to science the African penis and the European penis are the same size on average. There is no proof whatsoever that “Once you go black you never come back”. And prostitutes will tell you that black men and white men are pretty much the same in bed.

Black men are seen as little better than animals. Therefore they are feared for what their bodies can do, which means they are feared for their penises, which accordingly become large in the white imagination. Thus: “whoever says rape says black man”.

In Europe Jews were feared too but no one feared Jewish rapists. When violence was turned on them no one thought to castrate them. Because they were feared for their minds, not their bodies.

But the sex thing is not all of it. Blacks are also seen as morally dark, as sinful and evil – as if blacks were born with original sin but whites were born pure.

Even in Martinique where Fanon grew up and where nearly everyone was black, his mother would tell him to “stop acting like a nigger” if he did something wrong. And if his conscience was clear he would say he was “white as snow”.

Chapter 7 The Black Man and 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.

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.

Conclusion:

Fanon, in the whole book, tries to be analytical without attachment. He talks about black men’s desires to be white with psychological reasons. He never become insulting for blacks and also doesn’t present hatred for white people. But he fairly well describes their psychology of superiority mindset/complex.

 

citation :-

http://abagod.wordpress.com

www.weblog.liberatormagazine.com

http://currentsoc6.wordpress.com

 

 
to evaluate my assignment click here