Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks PDF

Other Works by Frantz Fanon Published by Grove Press: The Wretched of the Earth A Dying Colonialism Toward the African Revolution Frantz Fanon BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS Translated from the French by Richard Philcox Grove Press New York Originally published in the French language under the title Peau noire, masques blancs by Editions du Seuil, Palis. Published simultaneously in Canada Printed in the United States of America FIRST EDITION Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fanon, Frantz, 192.5-1961. [ Peau noire, masques blancs. English] Black skin, white masks I Frantz Fanon ; translated from the French by Richard Philcox. p. em. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-10: 0-8021-4300-8 ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-4300-6 1. Black race-Social conditions. 2. Black race-Psychology. I. Title. GN645.F313 2007 305.896-dc22 2006049607 Grove Press an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. 841 Broadway New York, NY 10003 Distributed by Publishers Group West www.groveatlantic.com 08 09 10 11 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Foreword vii Introduction xi Chapter One The Black Man and Language 1 Chapter Two The Woman of Color and the White Man 24 Chapter Three The Man of Color and the White Woman 45 Chapter Four The So-Called Dependency Complex of the Colonized 64 Chapter Five The Lived Experience of the Black Man 89 vi I Contents Chapter Six The Black Man and Psychopathology 120 Chapter Seven The Black Man and Recognition 185 A. The Black Man and Adler 185 B. The Black Man and Hegel 191 Chapter Eight By Way of Conclusion 198 FOREWORD by Kwame Anthony Appiah Frantz Fanon was born in Martinique in 1925 and went to school there first, before moving to metropolitan France to continue his education. During the Second World War, he served in the Free French Army, which took him for the first time to North Africa. After the war, he studied medicine and psychiatry at the University of Lyons, com pleting his training in 1951. Two years later he was appointed to run the psychiatry department of the Blida-Joinville hos pital in Algeria; and he soon joined the Algerian liberation movement, the National Liberation Front (FLN), contrib uting to its underground newspaper, al-Moujahid. He was expelled from Algeria by the French authorities in 1957, moving before long to Tunisia, where he practiced psychia try and continued to work for the FLN. In 1961, he was appointed ambassador to Ghana by the Algerian provi sional government, but he died of leukemia that year. Fanon's short life would probably have been only a foot note to the end of France's colonial empire in Africa if he had not written two books: Black Skin, White Ma'3ks, which you hold in your hand, and The Wretched of the Earth. In these books (and in his other writings), Fanon explored the nature of colonialism and racism, and the psychological damage they caused in colonial peoples and in the colo nizer. He also wrote provocatively about the role of vio lence in the anticolonial struggles of the mid-twentieth vii viii I Foreword century and his ideas were enormously influential on intellectuals around the world in the years after his death. There are three intertwined themes in Fanon's writing: a critique of ethnopsychiatry (which aimed to provide an account of the mental life, in sickness and in health, of colonized peoples) and of the Eurocent:iism of psycho analysis; a dialogue with Negritude, then the dominant system of thought among black francophone intellectuals, in which he challenges its account of the mental life of black people; and the development of a political philoso phy for decolonization that starts with an account of the psychological harm that colonialism had produced. As the list of these themes makes clear, Fanon's work is profoundly shaped by his training as a psychiatrist, and by his response to the work of European ethnopsychiatrists trying to understand the psychology of non-European peoples. But, like all Mrican and Afro-Caribbean intellec tuals in the Francophone world in the mid-century, he was also molded by the ideas of the Negritude movement. In this, his first book, Black Skin, White Mask, published in 1952, Fanon asserted that «what is called the black soul is a construction by white folk," claiming, in effect, that the purportedly essential qualities of the Negro spirit that were celebrated by the writers of Negritude were in fact a European fantasy. Fanon also argued against Negritude that its assumption of a natural solidarity of all black people-in the Caribbean and in Mrica-was a political error. Far from needing to return to an Mrican past, black intellectuals needed to adapt to modem European culture; and they needed to help change the everyday life of ordi nary black people. And yet, despite all these criticisms, he conceded that Negritude could play an important role in freeing the native intellectual of dependence on metro politan culture. Foreword I ix In this book, Fanon also develops an account of the psychological effects of racism based, in part, on his own experiences of life among the black middle class in the French Caribbean. The dominant colonial culture, he ar gued, identifies the black skin of the Negro with impurity; and the Antilleans accept this association and so come to despise themselves. Colonial women exhibit their iden tification with whiteness, for example, by attempting neu rotically to avoid black men and to get close to (and ultimately cohabit with) white men; a process Fanon dubbed "lactification." This self-contempt manifests it self in other ways: as anxiety, in the presence of whites, about revealing one's "natural" Negro inferiority; in a pathological hypersensitivity that Fanon dubbed ''affec tive erethism"; in an existential dread; and in a neurotic refusal to face up to the fact of one's own blackness. Black children raised -vvithin the racist cultural assumptions of the colonial system, can partially resolve the tension be tween contempt for blackness and their own dark skins by coming to think of themselves, in some sense, as white. (Hence the "white masks" of the title). Fanon's approach in Black Skin, White Masks focuses on the problems of identity created for the colonial subject by colonial racism; and on the consequent need to escape from these neuro ses, which colonialism had produced. The passion and power of Fanon's writing comes through forcefully in this new translation. We may no longer find the psychoanalytic framework as useful in understanding racism's causes and effects as he did. But the vigor of his evocations of the psychological damage wrought on many colonial peoples-and on the coloniz ers who oppressed them-remains. And if we are no longer completely convinced by his theories, his work remains a powerful reminder of the psychological burdens that x I Foreword colonial racism imposed upon its victims. Yet, though Black Skin, White Masks is a searing indictment of colo nialism, it is also a hopeful invitation to a new relation between black and white, colonizer and colonized: each, he says (on the books last page), must "move away from the inhuman voices of their respective ancestors so that a genuine communication can be born." That message, alas, is also one that remains relevant today. INTRODUCTION I am talking about millions of men whom they have knowingly instilled with fear and a complex of inferior ity, whom they have infused with de spair and trained to tremble, to kneel and behave like flunkeys. Cesaire, Disc01.trse on Colonialism Don't expect to see any explosion today. It's too early... or too late. I'm not the bearer of absolute truths. No fundamental inspiration has flashed across my mind. I honestly think, however, it's time some things were said. Things I'm going to say, not shout. I've long given up shouting. A long time ago... Why am I writing this book? Nobody asked me to. Especially not those for whom it is intended. So? So in all serenity my answer is that there are too many idiots on this earth. And now that I've said it, I have to prove it. Striving for a New Humanism. Understanding Mankind. Our Black Brothers. I believe in you, Man. Racial Prejudice. Understanding and Loving. xi xii I Introduction I'm bombarded from all sides with hundreds of lines that try to foist themselves on me. A single line, however, would be enough. All it needs is one simple answer and the black question would lose all relevance. \Vhat does man want? What does the black man want? Running the risk of angering my black brothers, I shall say that a Black is not a man. There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinarily sterile and arid region, an incline stripped bare of every essen tial from which a genuine new departure can emerge. In most cases, the black man cannot take advantage of this descent into a veritable hell. Man is not only the potential for self-consciousness or negation. If it be true that consciousness is transcenden tal, we must also realize that this transcendence is obsessed with the issue of love and understanding. Man is a "yes" resonating from cosmic harmonies. Uprooted, dispersed, dazed, and doomed to watch as the truths he has elabo rated vanish one by one, he must stop projecting his anti nomy into the world. Blacks are men who are black; in other words, owing to a series of affective disorders they have settled into a uni verse from which we have to extricate them. The issue is paramount. We are aiming at nothing less than to liberate the black man from himself. We shall tread very carefully, for there are two camps: white and black. We shall inquire persistently into both metaphysics and we shall see that they are often highly destructive. We shall show no pity for the former colonial governors or missionaries. In our view, an individual who loves Blacks is as "sick" as someone who abhors them. Conversely, the black man who strives to whiten his race is as wretched as the one who preaches hatred of the white man. Introduction I xiii The black man is no more inherently amiable than the Czech; the truth is that we must unleash the man. This book should have been written three years ago. But at the time the truths made our blood boil. Today the fever has dropped and truths can be said without hav ing them hurled into people's faces. They are not intended to endorse zealousness. We are wary of being zealous. Every time we have seen it hatched somewhere it has been an omen of fire, famine, and poverty, as well as con tempt for man. Zealousness is the arm par excellence of the powerless. Those who heat the iron to hammer it immediately into a tool. We would like to heat the carcass of man and leave. Perhaps this would result in Man's keeping the fire burn ing by self-combustion. Man freed from the springboard embodying the resis tance of others and digging into his flesh in order to find self-meaning. Only some of you will guess how difficult it was to write this book. In an age of skepticism when, according to a group of salauds,;:; sense can no longer be distinguished from non sense, it becomes arduous to descend to a level where the categories of sense and nonsense are not yet in use. The black man wants to be white. The white man is desperately trying to achieve the rank of man. This essay will attempt to understand the Black-White relationship.. The white man is locked in his whiteness. "Translator's note: "Salaud" is the Sartrean definition of someone who refuses to take responsibility for his acts and demonstrates his bad faith, a fonn of self-deception, a denial of human freedom, and an ab dication of responsibility toward oneself and others. xiv I Introduction The black man in his blackness. We shall endeavor to determine the tendencies of this double narcissism and the motivations behind it. At the beginning of our reflections it seemed inappro priate to clarify our conclusions. Our sole concern was to put an end to a vicious cycle. Fact: some W hites consider themselves superior to Blacks. Another fact: some Blacks want to prove at all costs to the Whites the wealth of the black man's intellect and equal intelligence. How can we break the cycle? We have just used the word "narcissism." We believe, in fact, that only a psychoanaly tic interpretation of the black problem can reveal the affective disorders responsible for this network of complexes. We are aiming for a complete lysis of this morbid universe. We believe that an individual must endeavor to assume the universalism inherent in the human condition. And in this regard, we are thinking equally of men like Gobineau or women like Mayotte Capecia. But in order to apprehend this we urgently need to rid ourselves of a series of defects inherited from childhood. Man's misfortune, Nietzsche said, was that he was once a child. Nevertheless, we can never forget, as Charles Odier implies, that the fate of the neurotic lies in his own hands. As painful as it is for us to have to say this: there is but one destiny for the black man. And it is white. Before opening the proceedings, we would like to say a few things. The analysis we are undertaking is psychologi cal. It remains, nevertheless, evident that for us the true disalienation of the black man implies a brutal awareness of the social and economic realities. The inferiority com plex can be ascribed to a double process: Introduction I xv First, economic. Then, internalization or rather epidermalization of this inferiority. Reacting against the constitutionalizing trend at the end of the nineteenth century, Freud demanded that the in dividual factor be taken into account in psychoanalysis. He replaced the phylogenetic theory by an ontogenetic ap proach. We shall see that the alienation of the black man is not an individual question. Alongside phylogeny and ontogeny, there is also sociogeny. In a way, in answer to the wishes of Leconte and Damey, 1 let us say that here it is a question of sociodiagnostics. What is the prognosis? Society, unlike biochemical processes, does not escape human influence. Man is what brings society into being. The prognosis is in the hands of those who are p repared to shake the worm-eaten foundations of the edifice. The black man must wage the struggle on two levels: whereas historically these levels are mutually dependent, any unilateral liberation is flawed, and the worst mistake would be to believe their mutual dependence automatic. Moreover, such a systematic trend goes against the facts. We will demonstrate this. For once, reality requires total comprehension. An an swer must be found on the objective as well as the subjec tive level. And there's no point sidling up crabwise with a mea culpa look, insisting it's a matter of salvation of the soul. Genuine disalienation will have been achieved only when things, in the most materialist sense, have resumed their rightful place. 1. M. Leconte and A. Damey, "Essai critique des nosographies psychiatriques actuelles." xvi I Introduction It is considered appropriate to preface a work on psy chology with a methodology. We shall break with tradition. We leave methods to the botanists and mathematicians. There is a point where methods are resorbed. That is where we would like to position ourselves. We shall attempt to discover the various mental attitudes the black man adopts in the face of white civilization. The "savage" will not be included here. Certain ele ments have not yet had enough impact on him. We believe the juxtaposition of the black and white races has resulted in a massive psycho-existential complex. By analyzing it we aim to destroy it. Many Blacks will not recognize themselves in the fol lowing pages. Likewise many Whites. But the fact that I feel alien to the world of the schizo phrenic or of the sexually impotent in no way diminishes their reality. The attitudes I propose describing are true. I have found them any number of times. I identified the same aggressiveness and passivity in stu dents, workers, and the pimps of Pigalle or Marseille. This book is a clinical study. Those who recognize them selves in it will, I believe, have made a step in the right direction. My true wish is to get my brother, black or white, to shake off the dust from that lamentable livery built up over centuries of incomprehension. The structure of the present work is grounded in tem porality. Every human problem cries out to be considered on the basis of time, the ideal being that the present al ways serves to build the future. And this future is not that of the cosmos, but very much the future of my century, my country, and my existence. Introduction I xvii In no way is it up to me to prepare for the world coming after me. I am resolutely a man of my time. And that is my reason for living. The future must be a construction supported by man in the present. This future edifice is linked to the present insofar as I consider the present something to be overtaken. The first three chapters deal with the black man in modern times. I take the contemporary black man and endeavor to determine his attitudes in a white world. The last two chapters focus on an attempt to explain psycho pathologically and philosophically the being of the black man. The analysis is above all regressive. The fourth and fifth chapters are sit"!lated at a funda mentally different level. In the fourth chapter, I make a critical study of a book2 that I consider dangerous. Moreover, the author, 0. Mannoni, is aware of the ambiguity of his position. There lies perhaps one of the merits of his testimony. He has attempted to give an account of a situation. We are en titled to be dissatisfied with it. It is our duty to convey to the author the instances in which we disagree with him. The fifth chapter, which I have called "The Lived Ex perience of the Black Man," is important for more than one reason. It shows the black man confronted with his race. Note that there is nothing in common between the black man in this chapter and the black man who wants to sleep with the white woman. The latter wants to be white. Or has a thirst for revenge, in any case. In this chapter, on 2. 0. Mannoni, Psychologie de la colonisation (Prospera and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization), Editions du Seuil, 1950. xviii I Introduction the contrary, we are witness to the desperate efforts of a black man striving desperately to discover the meaning of black identity. White civilization and European culture have imposed an existential deviation on the black man. We shall demonstrate furthermore that what is called the black soul is a construction by white folk. The educated black man, slave of the myth of the spon taneous and cosmic Negro, feels at some point in time that his race no longer understands him. Or that he no longer understands his race. He is only too pleased about this, and by developing further this difference, this incomprehension and discord, he discovers the meaning of his true humanity. Less com monly he wants to feel a pa1t of his people. And with fe verish lips and frenzied heart he plunges into the great black hole. We shall see that this wonderfully generous attitude rejects the present and future in the name of a mystical past. As those of an Antillean, our observations and conclu sions are valid only for the French Antilles-at least re garding the black man on his home territory. A study needs to be made to explain the differences between Antilleans and Africans. One day perhaps we shall conduct such a study. Perhaps it will no longer be necessary, in which case we can but have reason for applause. Chapter One THE BLACK MAN AND LANGUAGE We attach a fundamental importance to the phenomenon of language and consequently consider the study of lan guage essential for providing us with one element in un derstancl.ing the black man's dimension of being-for-others, it being understood that to speak is to exist absolutely for the other. The black man possesses two dimensions: one with his fellow Blacks, the other with the Whites. A black man behaves differently with a white man than he does with another black man. There is no doubt whatsoever that this fissiparousness is a direct consequence of the colonial undertaking. Nobody dreams of challenging the fact that its principal inspiration is nurtured by the core of theories which represent the black man as the missing link in the slow evolution from ape to man. These are objective facts that state reality. But once we have taken note of the situation, once we have understood it, we consider the job done. How can we possibly not hear that voice again tumbling down the steps of History: "It's no longer a question of knowing the world, but of transforming it." This question is tenibly present in our lives. To speak means being able to use a certain syntax and possessing the morphology of such and such a language, 1 2 I Black Skin, White Masks but it means above all assuming a culture and bearing the weight of a civilization. Since the situation is not one-sided, the study should reflect this. We would very much like to be given credit for certain points that, however unacceptable they may appear early on, will prove to be factually accurate. The problem we shall tackle in this chapter is as fol lows: the more the black Antillean assimilates the French language, the whiter he gets-i.e., the closer he comes to becoming a true human being. We are fully aware that this is one of man's attitudes faced with Being. A man who possesses a language possesses as an indirect conse quence the world expressed and implied by this language. You can see what we are driving at: there is an extraordi nary power in the possession of a language. Paul Valery knew this, and described language as "The god gone astray in the flesh."1 In a work in progress2 we propose to study this phenom enon. For the time being we would like to demonstrate why the black Antillean, whoever he is, always has to jus tifY his stance in relation to language. Going one step far ther, we shall enlarge the scope of our description to include every colonized subject. All colonized people-in other words, people in whom an inferiority complex has taken root, whose local cultural originality has been committed to the grave-position themselves in relation to the civilizing language: i.e., the metropolitan culture. The more the colonized has assimi lated the cultural values of the metropolis, the more he will have escaped the bush. The more he rejects his black- 1. Charmes, "La Pythie." 2. "Language and Aggressiveness." Frantz Fanon I 3 ness and the bush, the whiter he will become. In the colo nial army, and particularly in the regiments of Senegalese soldiers, the "native" officers are mainly interpreters. They serve to convey to their fellow soldiers the master's orders, and they themselves enjoy a certain status. There is the town, there is the country. There is the capital, there are the provinces. Apparently, the problem is the same. Take an inhabitant of Lyon in Paris. He will boast of how calm his city is, how bewitchingly beautiful are the banks of the Rhone, how magnificent are the plane trees, and so many other things that people with nothing to do like to go on about. If you meet him on his return from Paris, and especially if you've never been to the capi tal, he'll never stop singing its praises: Paris, City of Light; the Seine; the riverside dance cafes; see Paris and die. The same process repeats itself in the case of the Martinican. First, there is his island: Basse Pointe, Marigot, Gros Morne, in opposition to the imposing city of Fort de-France. Then-and this is the essential point-there is what lies beyond his island. The black man who has been to the metropole is a demigod. On this subject I shall indi cate a fact that must have struck my fellow islanders. After a fairly long stay in the metropole, many Antilleans return home to be deified. The native islander who has never left his hole, the country bumpkin, adopts a most eloquent form of ambivalence toward them. The black man who has lived in France for a certain time returns home radically transformed. Genetically spealdng, his phenotype under goes an absolute, definitive mutation.3 before he 3. By this we mean that the black man who returns home gives the impression of having completed a cycle, o f added something that was missing. He returns home literally full 4 I Black Skin, White Masks leaves one senses from his almost aerial way of walking that new forces have been set in motion. W hen he meets a friend or colleague, gone is the expansive bear hug; instead our "future" candidate bows discreetly. The usually rau cous voice gives way to a hushed murmur. For he knows that over there in France he will be stuck with a stereo type in Le Havre or Marseille: 'Tm fwom Matinique; this is my vewy furst visit to Fwance"; he knows that what the poets call "divine cooing" (meaning Creole) is but a term midway between Creole and French. In the French Antilles the bourgeoisie does not use Creole, except when speaking to servants. At school the young Martinican is taught to treat the dialect with contempt. Avoid Creolisms. Some families forbid speaking Creole at home, and moth ers call their children little ragamuffins for using it. My mother wanted a memorandum son If you don't learn your history lesson You'll not go to Sunday mass In your Sunday best This child will be the shame of us This child will be our God damn it Shut up I told you you have to speak French The French from France The Frenchman's French French French. 4 Yes I must watch m y diction because that's how they' ll judge me. He can't even speak French properly, they'll say with the utmost contempt. Among a group of young Antilleans, he who can express himself, who masters the language, is the one to look out for: be wary of him; he's almost white. In France they say 4. Leon-G. Damas, "Hoquet," Pigments. Frantz Fanon I 5 "to speak like a book." In Martinique they say "to speak like a white man." The black man entering France reacts against the myth of the Martinican who swallows his r's. He'll go to work on it and enter into open conflict with it. He will make every effort not only to roll his r's, but also to make them stand out. On the lookout for the slightest reaction of others, lis tening to himself speak and not trusting his own tongue, an unfortunately lazy organ, he will lock himself in his room and read for hours--desperately working on his diction. Recently, a friend told us this story. On arrival in Le Havre a Martinican into a cafe and calls out with great assur ance: 'Waitenn? Bwing me a dwink of beerrrr!" This is a case of genuine intoxication. Anxious not to correspond to the black man who swallows his r's, he makes use of a great many of them but doesn't know how to divide them out. There is a psy chological phenomenon that consists in believing the world will open up as borders are broken down. The black Antillean, prisoner on his island, lost in an atmosphere without the slightest prospect, feels the call of Europe like a breath of fresh air. For we must admit that Cesaire was overly generous in his Notebook of a Return to My Native Land. The city of Fort-de-France is truly lackluster and shipwrecked. Over there on the slopes of the sun is "the city-flat, sprawled, tripped up by its common sense, inert, winded under the geometric weight of its eternally renewed cross, at odds with its fate, mute, baffled, unable to circulate the pith of this ground, em barrassed, lopped, reduced, cut off from fauna and flora."5 Cesaire's description has nothing poetical about it. It is easy to understand therefore why the black man, on the 5. Return to My Native Land, translated by Emile Snyder, Presence Africaine, 1968, p. 13. 6 I Black Skin, White Masks announcement of his entry into France (as is said of some one entering "high society"), is ove joyed and decides to change. Moreover, there is nothing thematic about this change that is structural and independent of any introspec tion. In the United States, Pearce and Williamson have conducted an experiment called the Peckham experiment. The authors have proved that there is a biochemical modi fication in a married couple, and apparently they have de tected in the husband certain hormones of his pregnant wife. It would be interesting (and there will always be somebody willing) to make a study of the black man's humoral muta tion on entering France. Or simply study his psyche before he leaves and then one month after settling in France. There is a dramatic conflict in what is commonly called the human sciences. Should we postulate a typical human reality and describe its psychic modalities, taking into ac count only the imperfections, or should we not rather mal of the mail?" "No, sir."11 Monsieur Veneuse has native porters. He has a young native girl in his hut. And to the Africans who appear to regret his departure, he feels that the only thing to say would be: "Please go away. Please go away. You can see how miserable I am at having to leave you. Please go away! I will not forget you. I'm leaving because this country is not mine and because I feel too lonely, too empty, too deprived of all the comforts I need but that you, luckily for you, do not yet require."12 Wh n we read such a passage, we can't help thinking of Felix Eboue, undeniably black, who', under the same con ditions, understood his duty from quite a different angle. Jean Veneuse is not a "Negro," and does not want to be a "Negro." Yet, unbeknownst to him, a hiatus has occurred. There is something indefinable, irreversible, indeed the that within13 of Harold Rosenberg. 14 Louis T. Achille in his address to the Interracial Con ference of 1949 said: 11. Ibid., p. 162. 12. Ibid., p. 213. 13. Translator's note: In English in the original. 14. "Du Jeu au Je, Esquisse d'une geographie de I'action," Les Temps Modernes, 1948. Frantz Fanon I 53 Insofar as truly interracial marriage is concerned, one can le gitimately wonder to what extent it may not represent for the colored spouse a kind of subjective consecration to wiping out in himself and in his own mind the color prejudice from which he has suffered so long. It would be interesting to investigate this in a given number of cases and perhaps to seek in this clouded motivation the underlying reason for certain interra cial marriages entered into outside the normal conditions of a happy household. Some men or some women, in eflect, by choosing partners of another race, marry persons of a class or culture inferior to their own whom they would not have cho sen as spouses in their own race and whose chief asset seems to be the assurance that the parhter will achieve denatural ization and (to use a loathsome word) "deracialization." Among certain people of color, the fact that they are marrying some one of the white race seems to have overridden every other consideration. In this fact, they fmd access to complete equality with that illustrious race, the master of the world, the ruler of the peoples of color."15 We know that historically the Negro found guilty of sleeping with a white woman was castrated. The black man who has possessed a white woman is cast out by his fel lows. The mind has a tendency to visualize such a sexual obsession. The archetype of Brer Rabbit in Uncle Remus, who represents the black man, gravitates along these lines. Will he manage to bed the two daughters of Mrs. Mead ows? There are ups and downs, all told by a jovial, easy going, laughing Negro, the ingratiating, grinning Negro. While we were very slowly awakening to the shock of puberty we were made to admire one of our own return ing from the metropole with a young Parisian girl on his arm. We will endeavor to analyze this problem in another chapter. 15. Rythmes du Monde, 1949, p. 113. 54 I Black Skin, White Masks In recent conversations with Antillean men we learned that their main preoccupation on setting foot in France was to sleep with a white woman. B arely off the ship in Le Havre, they head for the bordellos. Once they have achieved this ritual of initiation into "authentic" manhood, they take the train to Paris. But in our case here, we need to interrogate Jean Veneuse. In order to do this, we shall make wide use of Germaine Guex's book La Nevrose d'abandon. 16 Contrasting what she calls the abandonment neurosis, which is pre-Oedipal in nature, with the real post-Oedipal conflicts described by orthodox Freudians, the author ana lyzes two types, the first of which seems to illustrate the case of Jean Veneuse: "The symptomatology of this form of neurosis is based upon the tripod of the anxiety aroused by any abandonment, the aggressivity to which it gives rise, and the resultant devaluation of self. "11 We have made an introvert out ofJean Veneuse. We know characterologically-or, better, phenomenologically that autistic thinking can be made dependent on a primary introversion.18 I n a patient of the negative-aggressive type, obsession with the past and its frustrations, its voids, its failures, paralyzes his enthusiasm for living. Generally more introverted than the positive-loving type, he has a tendency to keep turning over his past and present disappointments, building up within himself a more or less secret zone of bitter, disillusioned thoughts and resentment that often amounts to a sort of autism. But unlike the genuine autistic person, the abandon- 16. Presses Universitaires de France, 1950. 17. G. La Nevrose d'abandon, p. 13. 18. Minkowski, La schizophrenie, 1927. Frantz Fanon I 55 ment neurotic is aware of this secret zone, which he culti vates and defends against any intrusion. More egocentric than the neurotic of the second, positive-loving type, he views everything in terms of himself. He has little capacity for self sacrifice, and his aggressiveness as well as a constant need for revenge inhibits his impulses. His withdrawal does not allow him to have any positive experience that would com pensate for the past. Consequently, the lack of self-esteem and therefore of affective security is virtually total, resulting in an overwhelming feeling of helplessness toward life and people as well as a complete rejection of any feeling of re sponsibility. Others have betrayed and thwarted him, and yet it is only from these others that he expects any improvement of his lot.19 A marvelous description that fits perfectly the charac- ter of Jean Veneuse, for he tells us: All it took for me was to come of age and go and serve my adopted motherland in the country of my ancestors to make me wonder whether I hadn't been betrayed20 by everything around me, white folk refusing to accept me as one of their own and black folk virtually repudiating me. That is precisely I stand.21 An attitude of recrimination toward the past, a lack of self-esteem, and the impossibility of making himself un derstood. Listen to Jean Veneuse: Who can describe the desperation of the little hothouse kids whose parents transplant them to France too early with the idea of making true Frenchmen out of them! From one day to the next they, those who were so fre e and so alive, are 19. Ibid., pp. 27-28. 20. My italics. 21. Maran, op. cit., p. 36. 56 I Black Skin, White Masks locked up in a lycee "for their good," so say their tearful parents. I was one ofthose sporadic orphans and as a result will suffer all my life. When I was seven, my childhood education was entrusted to a big, gloomy lycee way out in the countryside.... But the fun and games of adolescence never made me forget how painful mine was. My withdrawn melancholic personal ity can be attributed to it as well as my fear of social contact, which today inhibits even my slightest impulse.22 Yet he would have liked to be cloaked with a mantle of affection. He never wanted to be abandoned. All the other students left during the vacation, and he was left alone- remember that word, "alone" the big white lycee. Oh, those tears of a child who has no one to comfort him.... He will never forget that he was apprenticed so young to solitude... A cloistered, withdrawn life, the life of a re. cluse where I learned too early to m editate and reflect. A solitary life that in the end was profoundly moved by trifles-it has made me hypersensitive within myself, in capable of externalizing my joys or sorrows, so that I reject everything I love and turn my back despite myself on every thing that attracts m e. 23 There are two processes at work here. I do not want to be loved. Why? Because one day, a very long time ago, I attempted an object relation and I was abandoned. I have never forgiven my mother. Since I was abandoned, I shall make the other suffer, and abandoning the other will be the direct expression of my need for revenge. I am leaving for Africa; I do not want to be loved, and I am nmning away from the object. Germaine Guex calls 22. Ibid., p. 227. 23. Ibid., p. 228. Frantz Fanon I 57 it "putting oneself to the test in order to prove it." I do not want to be loved. I am adopting a defensive position. And if the object insists, I shall declare I do not want to b e loved. Lack of self-esteem? Yes , certainly. This lack of s elf-esteem as an object worthy oflove has seri ous consequences. For one thing, it keeps the individual in a state of profound inner as a result of which it inhibits and distorts relation with others. It is as an object capable of arousing friendship or love that the indi vidual is unsure of himself. lack of affective self-esteem is to be found only in persons who in their early childhood suffered from a lack of love and understanding.24 Jean Veneuse would like to be the same as any other man, but he knows his situation is false. He's a searcher. He is searching for serenity and permission in the eyes of the white man-for Jean Veneuse is "the Other.'' This lack of affective self-esteem always leads the abandon ment neurotic to an extremely painful and obsessional feel ing ofexclusion, to never fitting in, and to feeling out of place, affectively speaking.... Being "the Other" is a term I have encountered on several occasions in the language of the abandonment neurotic. To be "the Other" is to always feel in an uncomfortable position, to be on one's guard, to be prepared to be rejected and... unconsciously do everything that's needed to bring about the anticipated catastrophe. One cannot overestimate the intense pain that accompa nies such conditions of abandonment, a suffering that can be attributed to the initial experiences of exclusion in childhood and makes the individual relive them particularly vividly.25 24. G. Guex, op. pp. 31-32. 25. Ibi d., pp. 35-36. 58 I Black Skin, White Masks The abandonment neurotic demands proof. He is no longer content with isolated statements. He has lost con fidence. Before forming an objective relationship, he de mands repeated proof from his partner. His underlying attitude is "not to love so as not to be abandoned." He is extremely demanding. He believes he is entitled to every sort of reparation. He wants to be loved, totally, absolutely, and forever. My dearest Jean, Your letter dated July arrived only today. It is perfectly unreasonable. -why do you torment me so? Do you realize how in credibly cruel you are? You make me happy mixed widt anxiety. You are making me at the same time the hap piest and the unhappiest of women. How many times must I tell you I love you, I am yours and I am waiting for you. Come. 26 Finally the abandonment neurotic has quit. is called for. He is needed. And yet, what fantasies! Does she really love me? Does she see me objectively? "One day, a gentle man, a great friend of papa Ned's, who had never seen Pontaponte, arrived from Bordeaux. But good Lord, he was so dirty! Good Lord, he was so ugly, this great gentleman friend of papa Ned's ! He had a horrible black face, all black, proof that he can't have washed very often."27 Jean Veneuse, anxious to find external reasons for his Cinderella complex, projects onto the three- or four-year old kid an arsenal of racial stereotypes. And to Andree he says: "Tell me, Andree darling... , despite my color, would you agree to marry me if I asked you?"28 26. Maran, op. cit., pp. 203-204. 27. Ibid., pp. 84-85. 28. Ibid., pp. 247-248. Frantz Fanon I 59 He is terribly unsure of himself. Here's what G. Guex has to say: The first characteristic seems to be the fear of showing one self as one actually is. This is a broad range of various fears: fear of disappointing, fear of displeasing, of boring, of wea rying... and consequently, of missing the opportunity to create a bond of friendship with others or, if it already exists, damaging it. The abandonment neurotic doubts whether he can be loved as he is, for he has undergone the cruel experience of being abandon ed when, as a child, hence without artifice, he offered himself to the tenderness of others.29 Yet Jean Veneuse's life does have its compensations. He dabbles in poetry. He is well read, and his study of Suares is extremely intelligent. This too is analyzed by G. Guex: "Prisoner of himself, locked in his reserve, the negative-aggressive exaggerates his feeling that everything he continues to lose or that his passiveness makes him lose is beyond repair. Consequently, apart from the privileged sectors such as his intellectual life or his profession, 30 he maintains a profound feeling of worthlessness."31 What is the objective of such an analysis? Nothing short of proving to Jean Veneuse that in fact he is not like the others. Make people ashamed of their existence, Jean Paul Sartre said. Yes : make them aware of the possibili ties they have denied themselves or the passiveness they have displayed in situations where it was really necessary to cling to the heart of the world, like a splinter-to force, if needed, the rhythm of the world's heart; dislocate, if 29. G. Guex, op. cit., p. 39. 30. My italics. 31. P. 44. 60 I Black Skin, White Masks needed, the system of controls; but in any most certainly, face the world. Jean Veneuse is the cmsader of the inner life. When he sees Andree again, when he is face-to-face with the woman he has desired for so many months, he takes refuge in si lence... the eloquent silence of those who "know the artificiality of words and acts." Jean Veneuse is a neurotic, and his color is but an ex planation of a psychic stmcture. Ifthis objective difference had not existed, he would have fabricated it from scratch. Jean Veneuse is one of those intellectuals who position themselves solely at an abstract level. He is incapable of making durable contacts with his fellow men. If people are benevolent, kind, and understanding toward him, it is because he overheard them talking about him. He "knows them" and is on his guard. "My vigilance, if we can call it that, is a safety catch. I greet their proposals politely and naively. I accept and offer aperitifs, join in the games or ganized on the deck, but I do not let myself be taken in by the goodwill shown to me, mistrustful as I am of this exag gerated sociability that has replaced a little too quickly the hostility in the midst of which they formerly tried to iso late me."32 He accepts, but also offers, aperitifs. He doesn't want to be indebted to anyone. For if he didn't return the offer of drinks, he would be a Negro and ungrateful like all the rest. If they are spiteful, it is precisely because he is a Negro. The fact is that they cannot help despising him. We have said, however, that Jean Veneuse, alias Rene Maran, is 32. Maran, p. 103. Frantz Fanon I 61 nothing more or less than a black abandonment neurotic. And he is put back in his place, his proper place. He is a neurotic who needs to be released from his infantile fan tasies. It is our opinion that Jean Veneuse is not represen tative of the black-white experience; rather, he represents a certain way for a neurotic, who happens to be black, to behave. And the purpose of our study becomes clearer: to enable the colored man to understand by way of clear-cut examples the psychological elements that can alienate his black counterparts. We shall deal with this further in the chapter devoted to phenomenological description, but we must recall that our aim is to enable healthy relations be tween Blacks and Whites. Jean Veneuse is ugly. He is black. What else does he need? Reread Guex's observations and it will be obvious to you: Un homme pareil aux autres is an imposture, an attempt to have any contact between two races depend on a constitutional morbidity. There can be no argument that on both the psychoanalytical and the philosophical level, the constitution is a myth only for those who seek to over step it. If from a heuristic point of view one must deny the existence of the constitution, the fact still remains that certain individuals endeavor to enter into preconceived categories, and we can do nothing about it Or rather, yes, we can do something about it. E arlier we referred to Jacques Lacan, and this was no coincidence. In 1932 his thesis was violently critical of the notion of constitution. Apparently, we are somewhat re moved from his conclusions, but our dissidence can be understood when we recall that we replace the notion of constitution along the lines ofthe French school of thought with that of structure-"embracing unconscious psychic life, such as we are able to know it in part, especially in 62 I Black Skin, White Masks the form of repression and inhibition, insofar as these ele ments play an active rqle in the actual organization of each psychic personality. "33 We have seen that Jean Veneuse on examination re veals an abandonment-neurotic structure of the negative aggressive type. We can attempt to explain this reactively, i.e., by the interaction of individual and environment, and prescribe for instance a change of scene:ry, a "change of air." In this precise case we found that the structure re mains. The change of air that Jean Veneuse prescribed for himself was not aimed at positioning himself as a man; he had no intention of setting the world right; he was seeking not this fulfilment characteristic of psychosocial equilibrium, but rather a corroboration of his externalizing neurosis. The neurotic structure of an individual is precisely the elaboration, the formation, and the birth of conflicting lmots in the ego, stemming on the one hand from the en vironment and on the other from the entirely personal way this individual reacts to these influences. Just as there was an attempt at mystification by infer ring from Nini's and Mayotte Capecia's behavior that there was a general law governing the behavior of the black woman toward the white male, so, we claim, there would be a lack of objectivity in extending Veneuse's at titude to the man of color in general. And we would like to think we have discouraged any attempt to connect the failure of Jean Veneuse with the amount of melanin in his epidermis. The sexual myth-the obsession with white flesh-con veyed by alienated minds must no longer be an obstacle to understanding the question. 33. G. Guex, op. cit., p. 54. Frantz Fanon I 63 In no way must my color be felt as a stain. From the moment the black man accepts the split imposed by the Europeans, there is no longer any respite; and "from that moment on, isn't it understandable that he will try to ele vate himself to the white man's level? To elevate himself into the range of colors to which he has attributed a kind of hierarchy?"34 We shall see that another solution is possible. It implies restructuring the world. 34. Claude Nordey, L'homme de couleur, Coli. Presences, Pion., 1939. Chapter Four THE SO.. CALLED DEPENDENCY COMPLEX OF THE COLONIZED There is not in the world one single poor lynched bastard, one poor tor tured man, in whom I am not also murdered and humiliated. -Aime Cesaire, Et les chiens se taisaient When we began this book M onsieur M annoni's work con sisted of a few studies published in the journal Psyche. We were about to write to the author to ask him for his findings when we learned that a collection of his ideas was to be published under the title The Psychology of Colonization. This chapter will be devoted to the study of this book. Before going into detail, let us say that his analysis is intellectually honest. Having experienced firsthand the ambivalence inherent in the colonial situation, M onsieur M annoni has managed to grasp the psychological phenomena-albeit, unfortunately, too exhaustively-that govern the colonizer-native relationship. The basic characteristic of current psychological re search seems to consist in exhausting every possibility. But we should not lose sight of reality. 64 Frantz Fanon I 65 We propose to show that M onsieur Mannoni, although he has devoted 225 pages to the study of the colonial situ ation, has not grasped the true coordinates. When you tackle a problem as important as the possi bilities of mutual understanding between two different peoples, you should be doubly careful. We are indebted to Monsieur Mannoni for having in troduced two elements whose importance cannot escape our attention. Upon quick analysis , any subjectivity in the field seems to have been avoided. Monsieur Mannoni's research is sincere, since it sets out to prove that man cannot be ex plained outside the limits of his capacity for accepting or denying a given situation. The problem of colonization, therefore, comprises not only the intersection of histori cal and objective conditions but also man's attitude to ward these conditions. At the same time we cannot help endorsing that part of M onsieur M annoni's work which tends to deal with the pathology of the conflict, i.e., to demonstrate that the white colonial is driven only by his desire to put an end to a feeling of dissatisfaction on the level of Adle rian overcompensation. However, we cannot endorse a sentence such as the following: "The fact that when an adult Malagasy is iso lated in a different environment he can become suscep tible to the classical type of inferiority complex proves almost beyond doubt that the germ of the complex was latent in him from childhood."1 On reading this passage, we feel something askew, and the author's "objectivity" could mislead us. 1. 0. Mannoni, Prospera and Caliban: The Psychology of Coloni zation, University of Michigan Press, 1990, p. 40. 66 I Black Skin, White Masks We have, however, desperately tried to find the under lying argument of the book as it is stated: "The central idea is that the confrontation of 'civilized' and 'primitive' men creates a special situation-the colonial situation-and brings about the emergence of a mass of illusions and mis understandings that only a psychological analysis can place and define."2 But since this is Monsieur Mannoni's point of departure, why does he want to make the inferiority complex exist prior to colonization? Here we see the mechanism at work in psychiatry, which explains there are latent forms of psy chosis that become evident following a traumatic experi ence. And in surgery, varicose veins in a patient are caused not by having to stand for ten hours, but rather by the con stitutional weakness ofthe vein walls; the work mode merely deteriorates the condition further, and the employer's re sponsibility is assessed to be very limited. Before taking up Monsieur Mannoni's conclusions in detail, we would like to clarify our position.Once and for all we affirm that a society is racist or is not. As long as this evidence has not been grasped, a great many problems will have been overlooked. To say, for instance, that northern France is more racist than the south, or that racism can be found in subalterns but in no way involves the elite, or that France is the least racist cou;ntry in the world, is characteristic of people incapable of thinking properly. In order to demonstrate that racism is not a reflection of the economic situation, the author reminds us that "in South Africa the white labourers are quite as racialist as the em ployers and managers and very often a good deal more so."3 We are sorry, but we would like all those who under- 2. My italics. 3. Mannoni, op. cit., p. 24. Frantz Fanon I 67 take to describe colonization to remember one thing: it is utopian to try to differentiate one kind of inhuman behav ior from another. We have no intention of adding to the world's problems, but we would simply like to ask Monsieur Mannoni whether he thinks that for a Jew the anti-Semitism of Maurras is any different from that of Goebbels. At the end of a performance of The Respectful Prosti tute in North Africa a general remarked to Sartre: "Your play should be shown in black Africa. It's a good illustra tion of how much happier the black man is on French soil than his counterpart is in America." I sincerely believe that a subjective experience can be understood by all, and I dislike having to say that the black problem is my problem, and mine alone, and then set out to study it. But it seems to me that Monsieur Mannoni has not endeavored to sense from the inside the despair of the black man confronted with the white man. In this study I have attempted to touch on the misery of the black man tactually and affectively. I did not want to be objective. Besides, that would have been dishonest: I found it im possible to be objective. Is there in fact any difference between one racism and another? Don't we encounter the same downfall, the same failure of man? Monsieur Mannoni believes tlmt tlw poor Whites in South Africa hate the Blacks irrespective of economics. Apart from the fact that this attitude can be understood from an anal ogywith the anti-Semite's mentality ("Thus I would call anti Semitism a poor man's snobbery. And in fact it would appear that the rich for the most part exploit4 this passion for their own uses rather than abandon themselves to it-they have better things to do. It is propagated mainly among middle 4. My italics. 68 I Black Skin, White Masks classes, because they possess neither land nor house nor castle.... By treating the Jew as an inferior and pernicious being, I affirm at the same time that I belong to the elite."5), we could retort that this shift of the white proletariat's ag gressiveness onto the black proletariat is basically a result of South Mrica's economic structure. What is South Africa? A powder keg where 2,530,300 Whites cudgel and impound 13 million Blacks. If these poor \Vhites hate the Blacks it's not, as Monsieur Mannoni implies, because "racialism is the work of petty officials, small traders and colonials, who have toiled much with out great success."6 No, it's because the structure of South Africa is a racist structure: Negrophilism and philanthropy are insults in S outh Af rica.... The agenda is to separate the natives from the Europeans, territorially, economically, and politically, and to allow them to set up their own civilization under the con trol and authority of the ·whites, but with minimum contact between the races. The aim is to reserve land for the natives and force the majority of them to live on it.... Economic competition would be eliminated and the groundwork would laidfor the rehabilitation of the "poor whites" who make up 50% of the European population. It is no exaggeration to say that most South Africans feel an almost physical revulsion as regards anything that places a native or a person of color on their leveF To conclude with Monsieur Mannoni's argument let us recall that "economic exclusion results from, among other 5. Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, Grove Press, New York, 1960, pp. 26-27. 6. Mannoni, op. cit., p. 24. 7. Father Oswin M agrath of the Dominican Monastery of Saint Nicholas, Stellenbosch, Republic South Africa, The Man of Color, p. 140. My italics. Frantz Fanon I 69 things, the fear of competition and the desire both to pro tect the poor white class that forms half the European population and to prevent it from sinking any lower." Monsieur Mannoni adds: "Colonial exploitation is not the same as other forms of exploitation, and colonial ra cialism is different from other kinds of racialism. "8 He speaks of phenomenology, of psychoanalysis, of human brotherhood, but we would like him to consider these as pects in more concrete terms. All forms of exploitation are alike. They all seek to justifY their existence by citing some biblical decree. All forms of exploitation are identical, since they apply to the same "object": man. By considering the structure of such and such an exploitation from an abstract point of view we are closing our eyes to the fundamentally important problem of restoring man to his rightful place. Colonial racism is no different from other racisms. Anti-Semitism cuts me to the quick; I get upset; a fright ful rage makes me anemic; they are denying me the right to be a man. I cannot dissociate myself fro m the fate re served for my brother. Every one of my acts commits me as a man. Every instance of my reticence, every instance of my cowardice, manifests the m an.9 I can still hear Cesaire saying: 8. Mannoni, op. cit., p. 9. When we wrote this we had in mind Jaspers's metaphysical guilt: "There exists a solidarity among men as human beings that makes each co-responsible every wrong and every injustice in the world, espe cially for crimes committed in his presence or with his knowledge. If I fail to do whatever I can to prevent them, I too am guilty. If I was present at the murder of others without risking my life to prevent it, I feel guilty in a way not adequately conceivable either legally, politically or morally. That I live after such a thing has happened weighs upon me as indelible guilt. That somewhere among men the unconditioned 70 I Black Skin, White Masks When I switch on my radio and hear that black men are being lynched in America, I say that they have lied to us: Hitler isn't dead. When I switch on my radio and hear that Jews are being insulted, persecuted, and massacred, I say that they h ave lied to us: Hitler isn't dead. And finally when I switch on my radio and hear that in Mrica forced labor has been introduced and legalized, I say that tmly they have lied to us: Hitler isn't dead.10 Yes , European civilization and its agents of the highest caliber are responsible for colonial racism. 1 1 And once again we resort to Cesaire: prevails-the capacity to live only together or not at all, if crimes are com mitted against the one or the other, or if physical living require ments have to be shared-therein consists the substance of their being." (Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt, translated by E. B. Ashton, Greenwood, p. 32.) Jaspers declares that jurisdiction rests with God alone. It is easy to see that God has nothing to do with the matter, unless one wants to clarifY this obligation for mankind to feel co-responsible, "responsible" meaning that the least of my acts involves mankind. Every act is an answer or a question: both, perhaps. By ex pressing a certain way for my being to excel itself, I am stating the value of my act for others. Conversely, the passivity observed during some ofhistory's troubled times can be read as default on this obligation. Jung in Essays on Contemporary Events says that every European must be capable of answering for the crimes committed by Nazi barbarity when confronted by an Asian or a Hindu. Maryse Choisy in L'anneau de Polycrate has described the guilt of those who remained "neutral" dur ing the Occupation. In a confused way they felt responsible for all those dead and all the Buchenwalds. 10. Quoted from memory. Political Speeches, 1945 electoral cam paign, Fort-de-France. 1 1. "European civilization and its best representatives are not, for instance, responsible for colonial racialism; that is the work of petty officials, small traders and colonials who have toiled much without great success." (Mannoni, op. cit., p. 24.) Frantz Fanon I 71 And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a ter boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss. People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: "How strange! But never mind-it's Nazism, it will pass! " And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non -European peoples; that they have culti vated that N azism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps and trick les from every crack.l2 Every time we see an Arab with that hunted, evasive look of distrust, draped in those long, ragged robes that seem to have been made for him, we tell ourselves that Monsieur Mannoni was wrong. How many times have I been stopped in broad daylight by the police, who took me for an Arab, and when they discovered my origins, they hastily apologized: "We know full well a Martinican is different from an Arab." I would protest violently, but I was told "You don 't know them." Truly, M onsieur Mannoni, you are wrong: "European civilization and its best representatives are not responsible for colonial rac ism"? Meaning that colonialism is the work of adventur ers and politicians, and the "best representatives" keep 12. Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism, translated by Joan Pinkham, Monthly Review, New York, 2000, p. 36. 72 I Black Skin, White Masks themselves above the fray. But, s ays Francis Jeanson, every citizen of a nation is responsible for the acts per petrated in the name of that nation: Day after day, the system weaves around you its pemicious consequences; day after day its instigators betray you, pur suing in the name of France a policy as foreign as possible, not only to your real interests , but also to your greatest ex pectations.... You pride yourself on keeping your distance from a certain order of things; as a consequence you give a free hand to those who thrive in unhealthy atmospheres, a creation of their own behavior. And if, apparently, you man age not to soil your hands, it's because others are doing the dirty work in your place. You have your henchmen, an d all things considered, you are the real guilty party; for without you, without your blind indifference, such men could not undertake acts that condemn you as much as they dishonor them.l3 We said earlier that South Africa had a racist structure. We will go farther and say that Europe has a racist struc ture. It is obvious that Monsieur Mannoni is not interested in this p roblem, since he says : "France is unquestionably one of the least racialist-minded countries in the world. "14 Be glad you're French, you lucky Blacks, even if it is a bit tough, for in America your counterparts are more unfor tunate than you are.... France is a racist country, for the myth of the bad nigger is part of the collective unconscious. We shall demonstrate this later on in Chapter 6. Let us continue with Monsieur M annoni: "In practice, therefore, an inferiority complex connected with the colour 13. Francis Jeanson, "Cette Algerie conquise et pacifiee," Esprit, April 1950, p. 624. 14. Mannoni, op. cit., p. 1 10. Frantz Fanon I 73 of the skin is found only among those who form a minor ity within a group of another colour. In a fairly homogenous community like that of the Malagasies , where the social framework is still fairly strong, an inferiority complex oc curs only in very exceptional cases. " l5 Once again we ask for caution from the author. A white man in the colonies has never felt inferior in any respect whatsoever. As Monsieur M annoni says so well: "He will be deified or devoured." Although the colonizer is in the "minority," he does not feel he is m ade inferior. In Martinique there are 200 Whites who consider themselves superior to the 300,000 people of color. In South Africa, there are 2 million Whites to almost 13 million Blacks and it has never occurred to a single Black to consider himself superior to a member of the white minority. While the discoveries of Adler and the no less inter esting findings of Kuenkel explain certain kinds of neu rotic behavior, we should not infer laws from them that would necessarily apply to infinitely complex problems. Inferiorization is the native correlative to the European's feeling of superiority. Let us have the courage to say: It is the racist who creates the inferiorized. With this conclusion we agree with Sartre: "The Jew is one whom other men consider a Jew: that is the simple truth from which we must start.... It is the anti-Semite who makes the Jew." l6 What of the exceptional cases described by Monsieur Mannoni? They are quite simply instances where the edu cated black man suddenly finds himself rejected by the civilization he has nevertheless assimilated. As a result the conclusion would be as follows: so long as the author's typi- 15. Ibid., p. 39. 16. Sartre, Anti- Semite and Jew, p. 69. 74 I Black Skin, White Masks cal authentic Malagasy adopts his "dependent behavior," all is for the best; but if he forgets his place, if he thinks himself the equal of the European, then the European becomes angry and rejects the upstart, who on this occa sion and in this "exceptional instance" pays for his refusal to be dependent with an inferiority complex. We detected earlier in some of Monsieur Mannoni's allegations a dangerous misunderstanding. He leaves the Malagasy the choice between inferiority and dependency. Outside these options there is no salvation. 'When he [the Malagasy] has succeeded in forming such relations [of dependence] with his superiors, his inferiority no longer troubles him: everything is all right. When he fails to es tablish them, when his feeling of insecurity is not assuaged in this way, he suffers a crisis."17 Monsieur Mannoni's primary concern was to criticize the methods currently applied by different ethnographers in their study of primitive peoples. But the author needs to be sent a message. After having imprisoned the Malagasy in his customs; after having unilaterally analyzed his vision of the world; after having drawn a closed circle around the Malagasy; after having said that the Malagasy has a dependency rela tion with his ancestors, characterized as being highly tribal, the author, in defiance ofall objectivity, applies hisfindings to a bilateral understanding-deliberately ignoring thefact that since Gallieni the Malagasy has ceased to exist. What we would like Monsieur Mannoni to do is explain for us the colonial situation-something, oddly enough, he forgot to do. Nothing is lost; nothing is created; we agree. Parodying Hegel, Georges Balandier in a study1 8 devoted 17. Mannoni, op. cit., pp. 61-62. 18. "'Ou I'ethnologie retrouve l'unite de l'homme," Esprit, April 1950. Frantz Fanon I 75 to Kardiner and Linton says of the dynamics of the per sonality: 'The last stage is the result of all the preceding stages and should contain all their rudiments." A joke that nevertheless remains the rule for many researchers. The reactions and behavior born out of the arrival of the Eu ropeans in M adagascar were not tacked onto preexisting reactions and behavior. There was no increase in the pre vious psychic mass. If, for instance, Martians set out to colonize earthlings-not initiate them into Martian culture but colonize them-we would doubt that such a person ality could survive. Kardiner corrected m any opinions when he wrote: 'To teach Christianity to the people of Alor would be a quixotic undertaking.... [It] would make no sense as long as the personality remains composed of ele ments that are in complete disharmony with the Christian doctrine. It would certainly be starting at the wrong end."19 And if Blacks are impervious to the teachings of Christ, it's not because they are incapable of assimilating these teachings. Understanding something new requires us to be inclined, to be prepared, and demands a new state of mind. It is utopian to expect the black man and the Arab to make the effort of including abstract values in their weltanschauung when they have barely enough food to survive. To ask an African from Upper Niger to wear shoes, to say he will never become another Schubert, is no less absurd than wondering why a worker at Berliet doesn't spend his evenings studying lyricism in Hindu literature or stating that he will never be an Einstein. In fact, in the absolute, nothing stands in the way of such things. Nothing-except that the people in question lack the opportunities. 19. Quoted by Georges Balandier, ibid., p. 610.. 76 I Black Skin, White Masks But they don't complain! And here is proof: At the brink of dawn, behind my father and my mother, the shack chapped with blisters, like a peach tree"' tormented by curl, and the thinned roof patched up with paraffin cans leaking swamps of rust into the squalid stinking grey pulp of straw, and when the wind whistles , these disparates make strange the noise, like the splutter of frying at first, then like a brand plunged into water ·with the smoke rising off from the twigs. And the bed of boards from which my race stood up, the bed of boards on its paws of kerosene cases, as though it had elephantiasis. That bed, with its kidskin and its dried banana leaves and its rags, a nostalgic excuse for a mattress , was my grandmother's bed (above the bed in a tin full of oil a candle-end whose flame dances like a big cockroach (and on the tin in golden letters, the word THANKS).20 Unfortunately, This attitude, this behavior, this shackled life caught in the noose of shame and disaster, rebels, takes issue, challenges, howls, and is asked, by God: "What can you do?" "Start!" "Start what?" "The only thing in the world worth starting: the end of the world, for heaven's sake. "2l Translator's note: There are two typographical mistakes in French text-----peche (sin) for pecher (peach tree) and navet (turnip) for ravet (cockroach). 20. Aime Cesaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land, translated Mireille Rosello with Annie Pritchard, Bloodaxe, 1995, pp. 83-85. 21. Ibid., p. 98. Translator's note: Fanon's text does not correspond to the original French text. Frantz Fanon I 77 What Monsieur Mannoni has forgotten is that the M ala gasy no longer exists; he has forgotten that the Malagasy exists in relation to the European. When the white man arrived in Madagascar he disrupted the psychological hori zon and mechanisms. As everyone has pointed out, alterity for the black man is not the black but the white man. An island like Madagascar, invaded from one day to the next by the "pioneers of civilization," even if these pioneers be haved as best they could, underwent destructuralization. Monsieur Mannoni, moreover, says as much: "The petty kings were all very anxious to get possession of a white man."22 Whether this can be explained by magical-totemic mechanisms, by a need to contact an awesome God, or by the case for a system of dependency, it remains true never theless that something new had occurred on the island and this should be taken into account-otherwise the analysis becomes distorted, absurd, and null and void. Since a new element had been introduced, an attempt should have been made to understand the new relations. The arrival of the white man in M adagascar inflicted an unmistakable wound. The consequences of this European irruption in M adagascar are not only psychological, since, as everyone has said, there are inner relationships between consciousness and social context. What about the economic consequences? Ifs coloniza- tion that needs to be put on trial! Let us go on \\ith our study. In other words, the Malagru;y can bear not being a white man; what hurts him cruelly is to have discovered first (by iden tification) that he is a man and later that men are divided into whites and blacks. If the "abandoned" or "betrayed" 22. Mannoni, op. p. 80. 78 I Black Skin, White Masks Malagasy continues his identification, he becomes clamor ous; he begins to demand equality in a way he had never before found necessary. The equality he seeks would have been beneficial before he started asking for it, but afterwards it proves inadequate to remedy his ills-for every increase in equality makes the remaining differences seem the more intolerable, for they suddenly appear agonizingly irremov able. This is the road along which the Malagasy passes from psychological dependence to psychological inferiority. 23 Once again we find the same misunderstanding. It is in fact obvious that the M alagasy can perfectly bear not being a white man. A Malagasy is a Malagasy; or rather he is not a Malagasy, but he lives his "M alagasyhood." If he is a Malagasy it is because of the white man; and if, at a cer tain point in his history, he has been made to ask the ques tion whether he is a man, it's because his reality as a man has been challenged. In other words, I start suffering from not being a white man insofar as the white man discrimi nates against me; turns me into a colonized subject; robs me of any value or originality; tells me I am a parasite in the world, that I should toe the line of the white world as quickly as possible, and "that we are brute beasts; that we are a walking manure, a hideous forerunner of tender cane and silky cotton, that I have no place in the world."24 So I will try quite simply to make myself white; in other words, I will force the white man to acknowledge my humanity. But, Monsieur Mannoni will tell us, you can't, because deep down inside you there is a dependency complex. "Not all peoples can be colonized; only those who ex perience this need." And further on: 'Wherever Europe- 23. Ibid., p. 84. 24. Cesaire, Notebook ofa Return to My Native Land, trans. Rosello and Pritchard. Frantz Fanon I 79 ans have founded colonies of the type we are considering, it can safely be said that their coming was unconsciously expected-even desired-by the future subject peoples. Everywhere there existed legends foretelling the arrival of strangers from the sea, bearing wondrous gifts with them. "25 As we have seen, the white man is governed by a complex of authority, a complex ofleadership, whereas the Malagasy is governed by a complex of dependency. Every one is happy. When we endeavor to understand why the European, the foreigner, was called vazaha, "honorable stranger"; when we endeavor to understand why the shipwrecked Europeans were welcomed with open arms, why the Eu ropean, the stranger, is never perceived as the enemy, in stead of explaining it on the basis of humanity, goodwill, or courtesy, the fundamentals of what Cesaire calls "the old courtly civilizations," we are told it's quite simply be cause something was written in "fateful hieroglyphics" specifically in the unconscious-that made the white man the awaited master. We finally get to the unconscious. But we should not extrapolate. When a black man tells me the following dream: "I have been walking for a very long time and am exhausted, I get the feeling something is going to happen, I climb over fences and walls, I come to an empty room, and behind the door I hear a noise, I think twice about entering, then make up my mind to go in, and in this second room there are white people, I realize that I too am white"; and when I try to understand this dream, to analyze it, knowing that this friend has problems with his job prospects, I conclude that the dream fulfills an uncon scious desire. But when I am away from my consulting room 25. Mannoni, op. cit., pp. 85-86. 80 I Black Skin, White Masks and attempt to integrate my findings into the context of the world, I conclude: 1. My patient is suffering from an inferiority complex. His psychic structure is in danger of disintegrating. Measures have to be taken to safeguard him and gradually liberate him from this unconscious desire. 2. If he is overcome to such a degree by a desire to be white, it's because he lives in a society that makes his inferiority complex possible, in a society that draws its strength by maintaining this complex, in a society that proclaims the superiority of one race over another; it is to the extent that society creates difficulties for him that he finds him self positioned in a neurotic situation. What emerges then is a need for combined action on the individual and the group. As a psychoanalyst I must help my patient to "consciousnessize" his unconscious, to no longer be tempted by a hallucinatory lactification, but also to act along the lines of a change in social structure. In other words, the black man should no longer have to be faced with the dilemma "whiten or perish," but must become aware of the possibility of existence; in still other words, if society creates difficulties for him because of his color, if I see in his dreams the expression of an uncon scious desire to change color, my objective will not be to dissuade him by advising him to "keep his distance"; on the contrary, once his motives have been identified, my objective will be to enable him to choose action (or pas sivity) with respect to the real source of the conflict, i.e., the social structure. Monsieur Mannoni, anxious to consider the problem from every angle, has made numerous inquiries into the Malagasys unconscious. To do this, he has analyzed seven dreams : seven sto ries that reveal the unconscious, six ofwhich show a domi- Frantz Fanon I 81 nant theme of terror. Children and one adult tell u s their dreams, and we picture them trembling, evasive, and unhappy. The cook's dream. "I was being chased by an angry black26 bull. Terrified, I climbed up into a tree and stayed there till the danger was past. I came down again, trem bling all over. " Dream of a thirteen-year-old, Rahevi. 'While going for a walk in the woods, I met two black27 men. 'Oh,' I thought, 'I am done for!' I tried to run away but couldn't. They barred my way and began jabbering in a strange tongue. I thought they were saying, We'll show you what death is.' I shivered with fright and begged, 'Please, sirs, let me go, I'm so frightened. ' One of them understood French but in spite of that they said, 'We are going to take you to our chief.' As we set off they made me go in front and they showed me their rifles. I was more frightened than ever, but before reaching their camp we had to cross a river. I dived deep into the water and thanks to my presence of mind found a rocky cave where I hid. When the two men had gone I ran back to my parents' house. " Josette's dream. The dreamer, a young girl, got lost and s at down on a fallen tree trunk A woman in a white dress told her that she was in the midst of a band of robbers. The account goes on: " 'I am a schoolgirl,' I said, trembling, 'and I lost my way here when I was going home from school,' and she replied: 'Follow this path, child, and you will find your way home.' " Dream of a fourteen-year-old boy, Razafi: He is being chased by (Senegalese) soldiers who "make a noise like 26. My italics. 27. My italics. 82 I Black Skin, White Masks galloping horses as they run" and "show their rifles in front of them." The dreamer escapes by becoming invisible; he climbs a stairway and finds the door of his home. Dream of Elphine, a girl of thirteen or fourteen. "I dreamed that a fierce black28 ox was chasing me. He was big and strong. On his head, which was almost mottled with white (sic), he had two long horns with sharp points. 'Oh, how dreadful,' I thought. The path was getting narrower. What should I do? I perched myself in a mango tree, but the ox rent its trunk. Alas, I fell among the bushes. Then he pressed his horns into me; my stomach fell out and he de voured it." Raza's dream. In his dream the boy heard someone say at school that the S enegalese were coming. "I went out of the school yard to see." The Senegalese were indeed com ing. He ran home. "But our household had been dispersed by them too." Dream of afourteen-year-old boy, Si. "I was walking in the garden and felt something like a shadow behind me. All around me the leaves were rustling and falling off, as if a robber was in hiding among them, waiting to catch me. Wherever I walked, up and down the alleys, the shadow still followed me. Suddenly I got frightened and started running, but the shadow took great strides and stretched out his huge hand to take hold of my clothes. I felt my shirt tearing, and screamed. My father jumped out ofbed when he heard me scream and came over to look at me, but the big shadow had disappeared and I was no longer afraid."29 Some years ago we were astonished to see for ourselves that the North Mricans despised black men. We found it 28. My italics. 29. Mannoni, op. cit., dreams, pp. 89--92. Frantz Fanon I 83 impossible to have any contact with the native Arab popu lation. We left Africa for France without understanding the reason for this animosity. Certain facts, however, were food for thought. The Frenchman does not like the Jew, who does not like the Arab, who does not like the black man. The Arab is told: "If you are poor it's because the Jew has cheated you and robbed you of everything." The Jew is told: "You're not of the same caliber as the Arab because in fact you are white and you have Bergson and Einstein." The black man is told: "You are the fmest soldiers in the French empire; the Arabs think they're superior to you, but they are wrong." More over, it's not true; they don't say anything to the black man; they have nothing to say to him; the Senegalese infantry man is an infantryman, the good soldier who only obeys his captain, the good soldier who obeys orders. "You not pass." "Why not?". "Me no know. You not pass." Unable to confront all these demands, the white man shirks his responsibility. I have a phrase for this: the racial allocation of guilt. We said earlier that some incidents had surprised us. Every time there was a rebellion, the military authorities sent only the colored soldiers to the front line. It is the "peoples of color"' who annihilated the attempts at libera tion by other "peoples of color," proof that there were no grounds for universalizing the process: if those good-for nothings, the Arabs, got it into their heads to rebel, it was not in the name of reputable principles, but quite simply to get their "towelhead" unconscious out of their system. From an African viewpoint, a colored student said at the Twenty-Fifth Congress of Catholic Students, during a dis cussion on M adagascar, "I object to sending Senegalese troops and protest against the way they are mistreated over 84 I Black Skin, White Masks there." We know, moreover, that one of the torturers at the police headquarters in Tananarive was a Senegalese. As a result ofknowing all that, and knowing what the Senegalese stereotype might be for a Malagasy, Freud's discoveries are of no use to us whatsoever. We must put this dream in its time, and this time is the period during which 80,000 na tives were killed, i.e., one inhabitant out of fifty; and in its place, and the place is an island with a population of 4 mil lion among whom no real relationship can be established, where clashes break out on all sides, where lies and dema goguery are the sole masters.30 In some circumstances, we 30. We refer to the testimonies given at the trial in Tananarive. Session of August 9. Rakotovao states: " Monsieur Baron told me, 'Since you refuse to accept what I have just said, I'm sending you to a room where you can think.' I went into the next room. The room in question was already covered in water and there was also a drum full of dirty water, not to mention other things. Mon sieur Baron told me, 'This will teach you to accept what I have just asked you to say.' A Senegalese received the order from Monsieur Baron 'to do me over like the others.' He made me kneel down, wrists apart, and with wooden pincers he pressed down on both hands, then placed his foot on the back of my neck and forced my head into the drum. Seeing I was about to faint, he lifted his foot so that I could come up for air. And this went on until I was utterly exhausted. He then said: 'Take him away and whip him.' The Senegalese therefore used a bullwhip, but Monsieur Baron came into the torture room and perSonally took part in the whip ping. This lasted for about fifteen minutes, I think, after which I said I couldn't bear it any longer for despite my young years it was unbearable. He then said, 'Admit then what I have just told you!' " 'No, sir, it's not true.' "He then sent me back into the torture room; called another Senegalese, since one was not enough; and gave the order to hang me by my and lower me into the drum up to my chest. And they re peated that several times. In the end I said, 'I can't take it anymore! Let me speak to Monsieur Baron,' to whom I said, 'I ask at least to be Frantz Fanon I 85 must recall, the socius is more important than the individual. I am thinking of what P. N aville wrote: treated in a manner worthy of France, sir'; and he answered 'Here is how France treats you!' Unable to take it any longer I said to him, 'I agree then to the first part of your statement.' M onsieur B aron an swered, 'I don't want the first part; I want it all.' 'I shall be lying then?' 'Lie or no lie, you must agree to what I am telling you."' The testimony goes on: "Suddenly Monsieur Baron said: 'Subject him to another type of tor ture.' They then took me into the adjacent room, where there was a small cement stairway. With my two arms tied behind my back, the two Senegalese held both my feet in the air and dragged me up and down the stairs. It was beginning to become unbearable, and even had I been strong enough, I couldn't have endured it. I said to the Senegalese, 'Tell your boss I agree to say what he wants me to say."' Session of August 1 1. Robert testifies: "The gendarme grabbed me by my jacket collar and kicked me from behind and punched me in the face. Then he had me kneel down, and Monsieur Baron started hitting me again. Without my knowing, he got behind me and I began to feel little hot pricks on the back of my neck. Reaching up to protect myself, my hands too got burned. "The third time I was on the t,rround I lost consciousness and can't remember what happened. The next thing I knew Monsieur Baron was telling me to sign a paper already drafted. I shook my head. The direc tor then called back the Senegalese, who dragged me into another tor ture room. 'You must agree, otherwise you'll die,' the Senegalese said. That's just too bad for him,' the director said. 'Get on with it, Jean.' They tied my hands behind my back, made me kneel down, and forced my head into a drum full of water. Just when I was about to suffocate they pulled me out. And they repeated that several times until I collapsed." Let us recall, so that everyone knows, that the witness Rakotovao was sentenced to death. When you read such things it seems obvious that one aspect of the phenomena he analyzes escapes Monsieur Mannoni: that the black bull and the black man are nothing more nor less than the Senegalese in the criminal investigation department. 86 I Black Skin, White Masks To speak of society's dreams as one speaks of an individual's dreams, to speak of collective will as one speaks of individual sexual instinct, is once again to reverse the natural order of things, since, on the contrary, it is the economic and social conditions of the class struggle that explain and determine the actual conditions in which individual sexuality is ex pressed, and the contents of an individual's dreams depends also in the end on the general conditions of civHization in which he lives.31 The fierce black bull is not the phallus. The two black men are not the two fathers-one representing the ac tual father, the other the ancestor. Here is what an in depth analysis might have been on the basis of Monsieur Mannoni's conclusions in the previous paragraph, 'The Cult of the Dead and the Family." The Senegalese soldier's rifle is not a penis, but a genu ine Lebel l916 model. The black bull and robber are not lolos, "substantial souls," but genuine irruptions during sleep of actual fantasies. What else can this stereotype, this central theme of dreams represent except putting the in dividual back in line? Sometimes there are black infantry men; sometimes there are black bulls speckled with white on the head; sometimes there is actually a very kind white woman. What do we find in all these dreams if not this central idea: "To depart from routine is to wander in path less woods; there you will meet the bull who will send you running helter-skelter home again."32 Malagasies, keep quiet, remain in your place. 31. Pierre Naville, Psychologie, Marxisrne, Materialisme, 2nd ed., M arcel Riviere et Cie, p. 151. 32. M annoni op. cit., p. 70. , Frantz Fanon I 87 After having described the M alagasy psychology, Mon sieur Mannoni goes on to explain the raison d'etre for co lonialism. In doing so he adds a new complex to the previous list-the Prospera complex--defined as the sum of those unconscious neurotic tendencies that delineate at the same time «the picture of colonial paternalism" and "the portrait of the racialist whose daughter has suffered an [imaginary] attempted rape at the hands of an infe rior being."33 Prospera is, as we know, the main character in Shake speare's play The Tempest. Opposite him we have Miranda, his daughter, and Caliban. Prospera adopts an attitude to ward Caliban that the Americans in the South know only too well. Don't they say that the niggers are just waiting for the chance to jump on a white woman? In any case, what is interesting in this part of the book is the intensity with which Monsieur Mannoni gives us the sense of the ill-resolved conflicts that seem to be at the root of the co lonial vocation. He tells us, in fact, What the colonial in common with Prospero lacks, is aware ness of the world of Others, a world in which Others have to be resp ected. This is the world from which the colonial has fled because he cannot accept men as they are. Rejec tion of that world is combined with an urge to dominate, an urge which is infantile in origin and which s ocial adap tation has failed to discipline. The reason the colonial him self gives for his flight-whether he says it was the desire to travel, or the desire to escape from the cradle or from the «ancient parapets," or whether he says that he simply wanted a freer life-is of no consequence.... It is always 33. Ibid., p. l lO. 88 I Black Skin, White Masks a question of compromising with the desire for a world without men.34 If we add that many Europeans set off for the colonies because they can get rich over there in a very short time, and that, with rare exceptions, the colonial is a trader or rather a trafficker, you will have grasped the psychology of the man who produces the "feeling of inferiority" in the native. As for the "dependency complex" of the Malagasy, at least in the sole form in which we can understand and analyze it, it too originates with the arrival on the island of the white colonizers. Concerning its other form, the origi nal complex, in its pure state, which might have charac terized the Malagasy mentality throughout the precolonial period, Monsieur Mannoni seems to us to lack the slight est basis on which to ground any conclusion concerning the situation, the problems, or the potential of the Mala gasy in the present time. 34. Ibid., p. 108. Chapter Five THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF THE BLACK MAN "Dirty nigger!" or simply "Look! A Negro!" I came into this world anxious to uncover the meaning of things, my soul desirous to be at the origin of the world, and here I am an object among other objects. Locked in this suffocating reification, I appealed to the Other so that his liberating gaze, gliding over my body · suddenly smoothed of rough edges, would give me back the lightness of being I thought I had lost, and taking me out of the world put me back in the world. But just as I get to the other slope I stumble, and the Other fixes me with his gaze, his gestures and attitude, the same way you fix a preparation with a dye. I lose my temper, demand an explanation.... Nothing doing. I explode. Here are the fragments put together by another me. As long as the black man remains on his home territory, except for petty internal quarrels, he will not have to ex perience his being for others. There is in fact a "being for other," as described by Hegel, but any ontology is made impossible in a colonized and acculturated society. Appar ently, those who have written on the subject have not taken this sufficiently into consideration. In the weltanschauung of a colonized people, there is an impurity or a flaw that 89 90 I Black Skin, White Masks prohibits any ontological explanation. Perhaps it could be argued that this is true for any individual, but such an ar gument would be concealing the basic problem. Ontology does not allow us to understand the being of the black man, since it ignores the lived experience. For not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man. Some people will argue that the situation has a double meaning. Not at all. The black man has no onto logical resistance in the eyes of the white man. From one day to the next, the Blacks have had to deal with two sys tems of reference. Their metaphysics, or less pretentiously their customs and the agencies to which they refer, were abolished because they were in contradiction with a new civilization that imposed its own. In the twentieth century the black man on his home territory is oblivious of the moment when his inferiority is determined by the Other. Naturally, we have had the op portunity to discuss the black problem with friends and, less often, with African-Americans. Together we pro claimed loud and clear the equality of man in the world. In the Antilles there is also that minor tension between the cliques of white Creoles, Mulattoes, and Blacks. But we were content to intellectualize these differences. In fact, there was nothing dramatic about them. And then... And then we were given the occasion to confront the white gaze. An unusual weight descended on us. The real world robbed us of our share. In the white world, the man of color encounters difficulties in elaborating his body schema. The image of one's body is solely negating. It's an image in the third person. All around the body reigns an atmosphere of certain uncertainty. I know that if I want to smoke, I shall have to stretch out my right arm and grab the pack of cigarettes lying at the other end of the table. As for the matches, they are in the left drawer, and I shal1 Frantz Fanon I 91 have to mo

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