Paper-11
Name: Ramiz M. Solanki
M. A. Sem:- 3
Roll No. 27
Batch: 2017-19
Enrolment No.2069108420180051
Paper No. 11 (Post Colonial Literature)
Assignment Topic: Fanon’s Views on ‘Colour of White Women and Black Men’
‘and Colour of Black Men and White Women’
Email Id: ramiz.solanki39@gmail.com
Submitted to: Department of English MKBU
Introduction:-
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.
It is a psychological
study of colonialism. According to Fanon, the encounter between white European
colonizers and black slaves and their descendants creates a unique social and
psychological situation with a characteristic set of psychopathologies. Black Skin, White Masks analyzes
these psychopathologies, traces their roots in the colonial encounter, and
suggests how healing might become possible.
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 behaviour 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.
About author
(Frantz Fanon)
Frantz Fanon (20 July
1925 – 6 December 1961) was a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary,
and writer from the French colony of Martinique, whose works are influential in the fields of post-colonial
studies, critical theory, and Marxism. As
an intellectual, Fanon was a political
radical, Pan-Africanist, and Marxist humanist concerned with the psychopathology of colonization,
and the human, social, and cultural consequences of decolonization.
The woman of colour and the white man
(chepter 2)
The second chapter is about the psychology
behind the marriage between white men and black women’ “The woman of
colour and the white man”. In this chapter Fanon talks about internalize
racism. In this Fanon defines authentic love as “wishing for others what one
postulation unites the permanent values of human reality”. Only a healthy
psychology is capable of this kind of love a psyche riddled with unresolved
unconscious conflicts is not. In this fanon examines how the psychological
conflicts resulting from black women’s internalized anti-black result in
inauthentic intimate reletionships.
According to Fanon, the acts of love and
admiration are directly tied to who and what we value. And he gave reasons that
why women of colour go after white men, putting down men of their own colour!
Fanon says,
“Authentic love …entails the mobilization of
psychic drives basically freed of unconscious conflicts.”
In other words, he cannot seek to love unless
he has rid himself, in this case, of his inferiority complex. Fanon explains
that, these black women do not truly love white men but they just love their
colour. They marry with them to deal with their own hang-ups about race. And it
is because the black woman feels inferior.
Secretly she wants to be white and marring
white is black girl’s way of doing this. Their racism is so profound that it
blinds them to good black man. With marring white person, black woman wants to
enter in white world. Mulatto or half girls don’t ever want to marry blacks
again. Fanon explains this psychology of black women and their desire to marry
whites with real examples in this chapter.
The man of colour and the White woman
(chapter 3)
The third chapter “The man of colour and
the White woman” is about black man’s psychology after being colonized by
whites.
Fanon argues that, the nature of the
relationship is also rooted in the latent desire to become white. He writes,
“By loving me she [white woman] proves to me
that I am worthy of a love. I am loved like a white man. I am a white man.”
Every black man and mulatto have only one
thought to be like white to gratify their appetite for white woman, to marry
white woman. They started denying their culture and woman and marry white girl,
less for love than satisfying their ego and inferiority.
Fanon explains this desire with example of
Jean Venuese, hero of a novel “Un home pareil aux autres” by Rene Maran. He is
black, but like other Europeans, he falls in love with white woman. He wants to
separate himself from his race and wants to marry white… Fanon, very
effectively, presents hidden desire of black man to marry white woman.
Conclusion
Above both Chapters
of Black Skin, White Masks are about
romantic relationships between Black and white people in white societies. Many
of the examples are about love between people from Antilles and people from
France within France.
In Chapter
2, Fanon examines romantic relationships between black women and white men,
taking Mayotte Capécia’s Je suis Martiniquaise and Aboudalye Sadji’s Nini as case
studies. He argues that these works provide evidence that some romantic
relationships between black women and white men are rooted not in “authentic”
love, but in black women’s sense of inferiority and need for white approval.
In Chapter 3, “The
man of colour and the White woman”
Fanon explores this dynamic at
more length when the roles are reversed: when the male lover is Black and the
female lover is white.
Works Cited
black skin white mask summery
chapter 2. 3
11 2018.
<https://freebooksummary.com/black-skin-white-masks-chapter-2-summary-118016>.
Black Skin, White Masks. 3 11 20118.
<https://www.gradesaver.com/black-skin-white-masks/study-guide/summary-chapters-2--3>.
jadeja, poojaba. Poojaba Jadeja's asignments. 3 11 2018. 13
october 2014
<http://poojabajadeja1315.blogspot.com/2014/10/black-skin-white-masks-general-overview.html>.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 3 11 2018. 9 september 2018 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Skin,_White_Masks>.
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