Summary:marina
A distinguished French Caribbean African psychiatrist and writer who was a member originally of the French Negritude group but soon rejected their philosophy and developed his own theory of racial and colonial theory. Franz Fanon, a French Martiniquan writer, published Black Skin White Masks as his first treatise on the effects of Racism and colonialization. Both a memory and a political treatise, Black Skins White Masks is a work illustrating the marginalization and servitude of the Black experience in the Western world. About his experience in Lyon as a member of the French Resistance, this book discusses how language is itself a dominating force against equal racial relations. He argues that language has become a testimony for the power imbalance and reassertment of difference in society. By speaking the language of the colonizers, the colonized continue to allow for their own enslavement through a kind of cultural imprisonment. Fanon, greatly influenced the later workings of Michel Foucault and his discussion of hegemonic power in language and culture. Fanon speaks of how the ‘Antilles Negro’ should reject the language and cultural traditions of their aggressor (France) and find their own culture which is separate from that of the colonial bourgeosie. Fanon argues that the colonial bourgeosie’s imitation of their French equivalent keeps the Antilles and other Caribbean ‘native’ culture oppressed through their own lukewarm attempt at emulating French society. According to Fanon, the colonized intellectuals will never empower themselves until they break from the valorization of French language and culture and begin to separate themselves from it.
Black Skin White Masks Originally published in Shvoong: http://www.shvoong.com/social-sciences/sociology/6045-black-skin-white-masks/
A distinguished French Caribbean African psychiatrist and writer who was a member originally of the French Negritude group but soon rejected their philosophy and developed his own theory of racial and colonial theory. Franz Fanon, a French Martiniquan writer, published Black Skin White Masks as his first treatise on the effects of Racism and colonialization. Both a memory and a political treatise, Black Skins White Masks is a work illustrating the marginalization and servitude of the Black experience in the Western world. About his experience in Lyon as a member of the French Resistance, this book discusses how language is itself a dominating force against equal racial relations. He argues that language has become a testimony for the power imbalance and reassertment of difference in society. By speaking the language of the colonizers, the colonized continue to allow for their own enslavement through a kind of cultural imprisonment. Fanon, greatly influenced the later workings of Michel Foucault and his discussion of hegemonic power in language and culture. Fanon speaks of how the ‘Antilles Negro’ should reject the language and cultural traditions of their aggressor (France) and find their own culture which is separate from that of the colonial bourgeosie. Fanon argues that the colonial bourgeosie’s imitation of their French equivalent keeps the Antilles and other Caribbean ‘native’ culture oppressed through their own lukewarm attempt at emulating French society. According to Fanon, the colonized intellectuals will never empower themselves until they break from the valorization of French language and culture and begin to separate themselves from it.
Black Skin White Masks Originally published in Shvoong: http://www.shvoong.com/social-sciences/sociology/6045-black-skin-white-masks/
