Analysis Of Frantz Fanons Black Skin, White Masks

Frantz Fanon’s, Black Skin, White Masks provides an account of the detrimental effects of colonization and racism for the black psyche. He depicts through the personal retelling of traumatic objectification and through analysis of the productive and reproductive effects of collective catharsis a situation of a social psychosis. According to Fanon, there is something unambiguous about the situations of colonialism and racism that affect the black man, the nightmares that repeat colonial trauma and violence. However, Fanon discusses a specific type of trauma – colonial subjugation – which results in the black man’s â€Å"self-division† of his â€Å"two dimensions† It is in this text that he explicates the process of racialization as a painful and†¦show more content†¦The very moment the French fleets land on the Madagascar shores, â€Å"injury without measure† occurs and produces a societal trauma that changes all relations. Th is act is the onset of the shattering of both culture and the self. The colonizer has taken â€Å"not only horizons†¦but its psychological mechanisms† - the native’s ability to produce their own selfhood. The colonization of Madagascar thus resulted in a cultural genocide. The imposition of the imperial language on the colonised subject in chapter one of Black Skin, White Masks wherein the black subject must unlearn their own mother tongue and speak French in order to be part of his or her new colonial world. The colonized subject, who is instructed to read and write in the language of their colonizer, speaks in the very formulation of words with which their existence is spoken for them, and by doing so upholds the notion of civilization in that language. Fanon notes culture still remains, but now â€Å"the Malagasy exists with the European† and have lost their â€Å"basic structure†. Akin to the Malagasy, Fanon had no access to his ancestral homeland or language, and similarly to many other black subjects, this lack of personal and cultural history is a visceral bearing as the trauma of colonization causes a shattering of the self. According to Fanon, the self comes into being through the body so when the body is subject to colonial abuse, this violence is reproduced through the self. More disturbingly however,Show MoreRelatedThe Fact Of Blackness By Frantz Fanon1223 Words   |  5 PagesFrantz Fanon’s â€Å"The Fact of Blackness,† a chapter from Black Skin, White Masks describes the anxiety felt while held in the gaze of the colonizer. A reading of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble in conjunction with Fanon’s work raises questions and possible strategies on how to reject neocolonialism and contemporary white supremacy. Fanon’s idea of blackness is performative but not for the gain of the black man, rather for the white man. 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