Student questions about Fanon
In Arts One this week we’re discussed Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952). I asked students in my seminar group to write down some questions they have about the book, or topics they’d like to discuss. Since we won’t get to all of them in class today, I’m posting them here for the students […]
Pigmintation
Black Skin, White Masks Blog Post Jummy Ha, After reading Black Skin, White Masks, the part that I am invested in most are first the use of pidgin language toward the ‘other’–the inferior blacks, and second, the mulatto. The idea of making language simpler and blunt not only creates the inferiority complex, it also emphasizes that black society […] Continue reading →
On Fanon, Language, and Racism
The fact is that the European has a set idea of the black man, and there is nothing more exasperating than to hear: “How long have you lived in France? You speak such good French.” (Fanon, 18) Reading this passage brought memories from last Thanksgiving, which I spent in Seattle with family. It was Thursday […]
The Value (?) of Stereotypes
I found the “Negritude” component of the presentation yesterday to be the most fascinating; elements of the phenomenon described seem to have evolved since Black Skin, White Masks into what today is black pride. That Fanon believes such attitudes counterproductive to producing conducive racial discourse was surprising, but upon hearing the “existence precedes essence” reasoning, it […]
Fanon and More
As a preface to this blog post, I fully empathize with how the lecture was opened yesterday. I also feel a little weird writing about “black” issues, because I don’t feel I have the experience or knowledge to talk about them in a way that is appropriate. I can’t remember where, but de Beauvoir mentions that men can’t write about women’s issues because they are both observers and party to the issues, and as a white woman I feel like I might be in a similar situation, even if it’s…read more
It Don’t Matter If You’re Black Or White (Except For When It Does)
This book should really be called ‘The Second Race And Its Discontents’, because I’m seeing a lot of Beauvoirisms and Freudisms, though perhaps Fanon was just trying to appeal to the adolescent boy market with all those references to genitalia.Here’s s…
Fanon blog post
sorry if this post is confusing, I’m not sure I even understand my own opinions, let alone the book they’re based on In ‘The Lived Experience Of The Black Man’ chapter of Black Skin, White Masks, the narrator claims that he “was up against something irrational” in being “hated, detested, and despised…by an entire race” […]
Black Skin, White Masks
Black Skin, White Masks is definitely one of the more challenging books we’ve read this year (for me anyway). The complexity of the themes discussed as well as the psychoanalytic aspects of the text made it quite difficult for me to really grasp what was being said. I understood the text in small portions but […]
Addressing Our Inner Racist.
Black Skin White Masks (1952) by Frantz Fanon had me thinking: is there a racist side to all of us? Somehow there’s this percieved notion of the desirable, default race that others aspire to imitate, conciously and subconciously. People, for the most part, do not tend to imitate the Japanese or the Chinese, the South Africans or […] Continue reading →
Black Skin, White Masks Blog Post
Jummy Ha After reading this book, or collection of essay-like chapters, the part that I am interested in most are two topics.First the use of pidgin language toward the ‘other’—the inferior blacks, and second, the mulatto. The idea of making language simpler and blunt not only creates the inferiority complex’, it also suggests emphasizes that […] Continue reading →