BLACK SKIN,WHITE MASKS

Joseph W.H. Lough, Ph.D.Filosofski fakultet Tuzla

Blog: http://www.newconsensus.org/LIT5Twitter: @jwhlough

email: joseph.lough@gmail.comphone: +387 603375497

Office Hours: 10-Noon, MW, Urban

Review•WH Auden

- the alienation of the intellectual/ artist in the post-war epoch

- cannot trust in the people

- cannot trust in history

- only trust in flesh/love

Preview•The problematic place of

literature and art in the (post)modern epoch

•Colonialism and Postcolonialism

•The problem of race/negritude in the (post)modern epoch

The Problem of Literature, Art, and

the Artist•WH Auden and Franz Fanon

occupy the same world

•How are we to understand their relationship to one another?

The Problem of Literature, Art, and

the Artist•When did classical democracy

first emerge?

•When did modern democracy first emerge?

•Why?

Pericles

1776

1789

1848

1871

The Problem of Literature, Art, and

the Artist

•For whom was Shakespeare writing?

•. . . or Chaucer?

The Problem of Literature, Art, and

the Artist•By whom or what was the

world of the 15th, or 14th, or 13th century mediated?

•Who was the writer or artist’s patron?

The Problem of Literature, Art, and

the Artist•By what are social relations

mediated in the 20th or 21st centuries?

•Who is the writer or artist’s patrons?

•To what end?

The Problem of Literature, Art, and

the Artist

•To what might we ascribe WH Auden’s estrangement?

•How can WH Auden shape the world?

The Problem of Literature, Art, and

the Artist•Is WH Auden responsible for colonialism?

•Is he responsible for reproducing the world of colonialism?

•Is he shaped by the world of colonialism? All I have is a

voice

Colonialism and Postcolonialism

•What color is modern colonialism?

•Why?

Colonialism and Postcolonialism

•But let’s play with that thesis

Colonialism and Postcolonialism

•What color was Franz Fanon?

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.

Fanon, Frantz (2008-09-10). Black Skin, White Masks . Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Colonialism and Postcolonialism

•Did Franz Fanon identify with the universal or the particular?

The dialectic that introduces necessity as a support for my freedom expels me from myself. It shatters my impulsive position. Still regarding consciousness, black consciousness is immanent in itself. I am not a potentiality of something; I am fully what I am. I do not have to look for the universal.

Fanon, Frantz (2008-09-10). Black Skin, White Masks (p. 114). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

And then they came to hellenize him, to Orpheusize him. . . this black man who is seeking the universal. Seeking the universal! . . .

The black man aims for the universal, but on-screen his black essence, his black “nature” is kept intact:

Always at your serviceAlways deferential and smilingMe never steal, me never lie, Eternally grinning y a bon Banania.*

Fanon, Frantz (2008-09-10). Black Skin, White Masks (p. 163). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

The black man is universalizing himself, but at the lycée Saint-Louis in Paris, they threw one out: had the cheek to read Engels.

There is a problem here, and black intellectuals risk getting caught in it.

How come I have barely opened my eyes they had blindfolded, and they already want to drown me in the universal?

Fanon, Frantz (2008-09-10). Black Skin, White Masks (p. 163). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Colonialism and Postcolonialism

•What is Negritude?

•What is Serbitude?

•What is Croatitude?

•What is Americatude?

•What is Bosnitude?

•What is the universal?

Colonialism and Postcolonialism

•When we assimilate ourselves to the universal, to what do we assimilate ourselves?

•Can we know ourselves apart from the universal?

•If we know ourselves apart from the universal, what do we know?

Colonialism and Postcolonialism

•What must I do to gain mutual recognition from another?

“It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; only thus is it tried and proved that the essential nature of self-consciousness is not bare existence, is not the merely immediate form in which it at first makes its appearance, is not its mere absorption in the expanse of life” (GWF Hegel Phenomenology §187).

Fanon, Frantz (2008-09-10). Black Skin, White Masks (pp. 192-193). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Colonialism and Postcolonialism

•Why does news of emancipation lead to psychoses and sudden death for the black man?

When the black man happens to cast a savage look at the white man, the white man says to him: “Brother, there is no difference between us.” But the black man knows there is a difference. He wants it. He would like the white man to suddenly say to him: “Dirty nigger.” Then he would have that unique occasion— to “show them.”

Fanon, Frantz (2008-09-10). Black Skin, White Masks (p. 196). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Colonialism and Postcolonialism

•When Moyette pledges never to marry a black man, how can we account for her desire?

I am white; in other words, I embody beauty and virtue, which have never been black. I am the color of day.

Fanon, Frantz (2008-09-10). Black Skin, White Masks (p. 27). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

It is because the black woman feels inferior that she aspires to gain admittance to the white world.

Fanon, Frantz (2008-09-10). Black Skin, White Masks (p. 41). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Colonialism and Postcolonialism

•To what has the black man been reduced by the white man?

In Europe, evil is symbolized by the black man. We have to move slowly— that we know— but it’s not easy. The perpetrator is the black man; Satan is black; one talks of darkness; when you are filthy you are dirty— and this goes for physical dirt as well as moral dirt. If you took the trouble to note them, you would be surprised at the number of expressions that equate the black man with sin. In Europe, the black man, whether physically or symbolically, represents the dark side of the personality.

Fanon, Frantz (2008-09-10). Black Skin, White Masks (pp. 165-166). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

In Europe, i.e., in all the civilized and civilizing countries, the black man symbolizes sin. The archetype of inferior values is represented by the black man.

Fanon, Frantz (2008-09-10). Black Skin, White Masks (p. 166). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Colonialism and Postcolonialism

•To what has the black man been reduced by the white woman?

The behavior of these women is clearly understandable from the standpoint of imagination because a negrophobic woman is in reality merely a presumed sexual partner— just as the negrophobic man is a repressed homosexual.

Fanon, Frantz (2008-09-10). Black Skin, White Masks (p. 135). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

The black man is fixated at the genital level, or rather he has been fixated there.

Fanon, Frantz (2008-09-10). Black Skin, White Masks (p. 143). Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

The Problem with Negritude/Race under the

Conditions of (Postmodernity)•Colonialism/Imperialism are not

“states of mind”; colonists/imperialists do not “decide” to colonize/imperialize

•How is the colonist’s/imperialist’s whole way of being dependent upon “eliminating” the “other”?

The Problem with Negritude/Race under the

Conditions of (Postmodernity)

•Why must obtaining recognition from another entail risking one’s life?

•Has the slave-master relationship always existed everywhere?

•Is it a necessary ontological condition of human being?

The Problem with Negritude/Race under the

Conditions of (Postmodernity)•If race, ethnicity, nationality,

language, religion, gender . . . are historically, socially, practically constituted and reproduced . . .

•. . . then they cannot be necessary features of abstract, universal human being.

The Problem with Negritude/Race under the

Conditions of (Postmodernity)

•How is race created?

•What would be among the preconditions for the elimination of race?

•Why does racism persist?

Preview

•Ousmane Sambene’s 1987 Camp de Theory

•US Embassy Representatives; American Corner 12:30 (Jasmina requests that you stay for talk)

•Open University, Room 101, Karl Marx in America, 6:30-9:00