Name :- Sejal N. Solanki
Course & Year :- M.A. Sem 3(2019-2021)
Roll No. :- 25
Enrollment No. :- 2069108420200037
Paper :- The Postcolonial Literature.
Topic :- The Black Skin White Mask.
Email :- sejal.solanki3107@gmail.com
Submitted :- Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir
:- Department of English
:- M.K.B.UNi.
WHAT IS POST COLONIALISM ?
Post-colonialism means time after colonialism. Post-colonialism is the study of culture after the physical and political withdrawal of an oppressive power. Post colonialism rejects the dominance of western culture. It challenges Western Knowledge system about the East.
A study of postcolonial literature must begin with the historical contexts of colonialism, contexts that are constantly and frighteningly shot through violence. The violence of colonialism – cultural, economic, political and military - is so integral to the history of the ‘Third World’ nation that no literature or critical approach has been able to ignore it.
As a critical theory, post – colonialism presents, explains, and illustrates the ideology and the praxis of neocolonialism, with examples drawn from the humanities history and political science, philosophy and Marxist theory, sociology,
anthropology, and human geography, the cinema, religion and theology; feminism, linguistics’ and post colonial literature of which the anti conquest narrative garners presents the stories of colonial subjugation of the subaltern man and woman. Salman Rushdie, Ngugi wa Thiong, Frantz Fanon, Toni Morrison, Amei Cesire, Edward Said, Homi Bhaba, and many more writers exploded the Post colonialism.
Postcolonial literature seeks to address the ways in which non-European (Asian, African, South American and Settler colonies) literatures and cultures have been marginalized as an effect of colonial rule, and to find if possible, modes of resistance, retrieval, and reversal of their ‘own’ pre-colonial pasts.
It is a literature of resistance, anger, protest and hope. It seeks to understand history so as to plan for the future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author of ‘Black Skin White Masks’ is Frantz fanon. He was born on July 20, 1925, at Fortde France, Martinique, France. He died at the age of 36, on 6th December1961 at Bethesda, Maryland. He was a revolutionary, philosopher, psychiatrist and writer whose writing influenced post colonial studies, Marxism and critical theory. He was an intellectual fellow political radical, existentialist humanist; He dealt with social, cultural, political problems. He supported the Algerian war of independence from France, and was also a member of the Algerian national liberation front. The life and works of Frantz fanon have inspired anticolonial national liberation movements in Palestine, SirLanka, and the U.S .He served in the French army. He studied Medicine. He was a psychiatrist.
Colonialism is not satisfied merely holding a people in it’s grip and emptying the native's brains of all from the content. By a kind of perverted logic it turns to the past of the oppressed people and distorts disfigures and destroys it”
- Frantz Fanon
Frantz Omar Fanon was born on 20th July, 1925 at Martinique (French colonial empire). He was Afro – Caribbean psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and the French writer whose works are influential in the field of post – colonial studies and Marxism. Fanon is best known for the classic on decolonization. Although Fanon wrote Black Skin, White Mask while still in France, most of his work was written in North Africa.
In France in the year of 1952, Frantz Omar fanon wrote his first book,’ Black Skin, White Masks.’ The book is an analysis of the negative psychology-cal impact of colonial subjugation upon black people. Originally, the manuscript was the doctoral dissertation, submitted at Lyon. Its title was “Essay on the Desalination of the Black” It was rejected and Fanon published it as a book.
Frantz Fanon was influenced by many thinkers and traditions including Jean-Paul Sartre, Lacan, Negritude and Marxism. He was influenced by Aime Cesaire, a leader of the negritude movement, was teacher and mentor to Fanon on the island of Martinique. Fanon referred to Cesaire writer's his own work. He quoted, for example, his teacher at length in “They live experience of the Black man “ a heavily anthologized essay of Black Skin, White Masks.
ABOUT THE BOOK
“Black Skin White Mask” is a book about the mindset of psychology of racism. The book is his doctoral thesis, Fanon wrote to get his degree in psychiatry. This book is worth reading since Fanon’s understanding of White French racism in early 1950 and it can also helps to understand White American racism in the 2010s.
Black skin white mask is a study of the psychology of racism and dehumanization inherent to colonial domination. Fanon describes that Black people experience in the white world. Fanon talks about, self – perception of the Black subject who was has lost his native cultural origin, and embraced the culture of the mother country. He also talks about the inferiority complex in the mind of the Black subject.
The book looks at what goes through the minds of blacks and whites under the condition of white rule and the strange effects of that in black people. The black man trapped in his blackness, the white man in his whiteness, both trapped into their mutual and aggressive narcissism.
“There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it”
- Fanon, Black skin, White masks.
Fanon‘s growing popularity and influence and more recent postcolonial readings of black liberation and nationalism perhaps several as an index of his centrality to the movement for the Algerian self determinations in the 1950‘s that was shaped his diverse career as a political activist and critic. “Black Skin, White Masks” is a Book about the mindset of psychology of racism. The book looks at what goes through the minds of Blacks and the strange impacts that has, especially on the black people.
The black man and the white man are not. And yet they are, and the reality of their being is Fanon's starting point: the black man trapped in his blackness, the white man in his whiteness, both trapped into their mutual and aggressive narcissism.
What, then, brings them or calls them into being, or sentences them to non-being? Writing of his childhood and emergence from it, Fanon remarks: I am a negro, but naturally I don’t know that because that is what I am. I am going to use nègre in French because of the ambiguity of its political semantics and because there is no single English quivalent: it is distinct from both noir (black) and the more recent homme de couleur (man of colour) and covers the whole semantic field from negroto nigger, the precise meaning being determined by context, the speakers position or even the speakers tone of voice. Fanons comment that he had to be told what he was is at one level a fairly banal example of the bracketing out of facticity in favour of simply being: at home, he remarks (meaning, presumably, in Martinique), the black man does not, has no need to, experience his being-for-others.
Judging by my own experience, it is, for example, perfectly possible to grow up in a uniquely white community in the north-east of England without knowing in any real sense that you are white. There is no need to know that, and it is well known that fish have no sense of wetness.
Here, we can I temperate that how this White and Black are portrayed in literature in different ways. Novel ‘Oliver Twist’ by Charles Dickens’ In this novel we can find the controversy of Black and White. Here Christianity – Whiteness portrays as goodness, while Jew – Black portrayed as Evil. Here Readers can find conflict between Christian v/s Jew. The novel has an idea of Christianity and Jewish. At something's extent writers have to described Christianity as a superior and dark side of Christianity has been presented. He portrayed Jew in a negative connotation.
Black Skin White Mask is a sociological study of the psychology of racism and dehumanization inherent to colonial domination. Fanon describes that Black people experience in the White world Fanon talks about, self-perception of the Black Subject who has lost his native cultural origin, and embraced the culture of the Mother Country. He also talks about the inferiority complex in the mind of the Black subject.
Now we are analyzing the book of Fanon ‘Black skin, White Mask’ this book is divided into many chapters. Each chapter has its own importance. They deal with the psychological aspect. It includes the condition of Black people and their mentality. It also gives reflection of white people towards black people. Let’s have a brief look in chapters of this book.
This final chapter discuses the escaping the prison of one’s past and one’s race.“The negro is not: Any more than the White Man”. In Fanon’s words, his writing “Exposes an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born”
Fanon throughout the book deals with the inner struggle of black when they were colony ‘the black man and language’ deals with language. Here we saw the ideal of blackness, notion of desire, and idea of identity, what is humanism? Other,
self ego, civil rights, human rights, self desire, the idea of Negritude, idea of darkness. For him Black is attitude, attitude comes from culture.
Black Skin, White Masks is certainly an amazing engagement with the fate of the black individual in society. The book deals with various questions and dilemmas faced by all humans. Its power lies in the fact that it remains surprisingly optimistic in spite of its serious subject matter. Fanon recognizes the problems faced by the former colonised and is quite aware of the psychologically draining position that he/she occupies. Yet, he focuses his attention on the debunking of whiteness as the epitome of being. He seeks to “work out new concepts” (Fanon, 1961, 255) and remains optimistic that this can indeed be done.
CONCLUSION
Fanon, in the whole book, tries to be analytical without attachment. He talks about black men’s desires to be white with psychological reasons. He never becomes insulting for blacks and also doesn’t present hatred for white people. But he fairly well describes their psychology of superiority mindset/complex.
Recent example which can prove Fanon’s psychology is great dancer Michael Jackson who tries to become white throughout his life.
Here fanon says that forget about the past and live in present world where there is no racial discrimination. Thus we can say this is the present time also white is considered as superior and Black as inferior. For e.g portrayal of Bollywood stars. They are selected because they are having white skin. Michal Jackson, who was very much obsessed with the white skin.
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