![]() In contrast to this dialectical position, in which “Black” is defined in opposition to a “white” that is considered superior, Fanon argues for thinking of Blackness as “immanent.” That means it doesn’t have to be defined in relation to whiteness. Instead they are objectified and reduced to being only their race. As Fanon puts it when someone on the streets in France says, “Look, a Negro!” thus putting him into a position as a group rather than an individual: “I was responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors.” This is dehumanizing because it deprives Black people of the experience of being a unique human being. Every individual starts to appear as a representative of the group. ![]() In a racist society, in other words, Black individuals no longer think of themselves as unique individuals, but as Black. It is when Black people have to encounter white people, and white people enforce that they are different from Black people, that a crippling sense of self-consciousness and self-doubt enters into their minds. Humans just feel they are human until someone else comes along to say they are subhuman because they are “black men” rather than just men. In Chapter 5, Fanon explores further how, rather than feeling naturally inferior, Black people do not even think of themselves as Black until a white racist society imposes that categorization. In this way, Fanon refutes the so-called “dependency” theory in which Black people are colonized because they naturally feel inferior and therefore want to be subjugated. The psychological problem is created from a social problem of unequal power. This means that any inferiority Black people experience is because of their status as belonging to a disempowered group. The colonizer divides up a society into white and Black and assigns higher value to the former. Whether in a minority or majority, white people create their own superiority by creating the inferiority of Black people. Instead, they use their minority status to establish their superiority, like a god among men. For Fanon, this is disproved by the fact that white people are often minorities in colonial contexts, but they never feel inferior. There are no degrees of inhumanity.įanon also rejects a premise in Mannoni’s book that a feeling of inferiority is related to being a minority in a population. To Fanon, this question of degree is foolish. Fanon notes a trend of deciding the extent to which a society is racist: some societies are more racist than others, people claim, and within France some regions are more racist than others. ![]() For Fanon, a racist society is any society that treats one race as inferior to another. Thus, for Fanon, the important task is not so much exploring the inferiority complex itself, but rather showing how a “racist” society produces feelings of inferiority. There can be no inferiority complex without white people creating it. In contrast, Fanon argues that colonialism produces this feeling of inferiority. In other words, Black people submit to colonialism because they already had a feeling of inferiority. ![]() For Mannoni, Black people have an inferiority complex that colonialism builds upon. Fanon is sympathetic to Mannoni’s writing, but he has one major disagreement. The purpose of this book was to explain the psychological conditions of colonialism, in other words what kinds of mentality Black and white people have in colonial societies. Mannoni called Prospero and Caliban: Psychology of Colonization. Now, he develops his analysis through discussion of a theoretical work by M. In the previous chapters, Fanon developed his analysis through discussions of novels. Fanon wants to know how this hierarchy is created and how it is enforced. In particular, he explores how interracial contact creates conditions of inferiority and superiority in Black and white people, respectively. Now, Fanon turns his attention to the experience of Black people in colonial or white societies beyond romance. Chapters 4 and 5 expand somewhat on the themes explored in the previous two chapters on interracial romance.
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