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Books by and about Fanon
The Wretched of the Earth
/
Black Skins, White Masks /
A Dying Colonialism /
Toward the African Revolution
A Dying Colonialism /
The Fanon Reader /
Fanon: A Critical Reader /
Fanon: A Novel
* * * * *
The Mask
Remembering
Slavery, Understanding Trauma
By
Grada Kilomba
There is a mask,
from which I heard many times during my childhood. The
many recountings and the detailed descriptions seemed to
warn me that those were not simple facts of the past,
but living memories buried in our psyche, ready to be
told. Today, I want to re-tell them. I want to speak
about that brutal mask of speechlessness.
This mask was a
very concrete piece, a real instrument, which became a
part of the European colonial project for more than
three hundred years. It was composed of a bit, placed
inside the mouth of the Black subject, clamped between
the tongue and the jaw, and fixed behind the head with
two strings: one surrounding the chin and the second
surrounding the nose and the forehead.
Formally, the mask was used by white masters to prevent
enslaved Africans from eating sugar cane or cocoa beans,
while working on the plantations, but its primary
function was to implement a sense of speechlessness and
fear, inasmuch as the mouth was at the same time a place
of muteness and a place of torture.
The mask
represents, in this sense, colonialism as a whole. It
symbolizes the white sadistic politics of conquest and
domination, and its brutal regimes of silencing the so
called ‘Other.’ I intend to remember this mask as a
symbol of speechlessness and violence, and how
these—speechlessness and violence—are restaged in
everyday life. In other words, I am concerned with two
main questions: Who can indeed speak? And what happens
when we speak?
The Mouth
The mouth is a very
special organ, it symbolizes speech and enunciation.
Within racism it becomes the organ of oppression par
excellence, it represents the organ whites want— and
need—to control, and therefore, the organ which
historically has been severely confined.
In this particular
scenario, the mouth is also a metaphor to possession. It
is fantasized that the Black subject wants to possess
something which belongs to the white master, the fruits.
She or he wants to eat them, to devour them,
dispossessing the master from its goods. Although the
plantation, and its fruits, do ‘morally’ belong to the
colonized, the colonizer interprets it perversely,
reading it as a sign of robbery. “We are taking what is
Theirs” becomes “They are taking what is Ours.” We are
dealing here with a process of denial, for the master
denies its project of colonization and asserts it onto
the colonized. It is this moment of asserting onto the
other, what the subject refuses to recognize in
her-himself, which characterizes this ego defence
mechanism. In racism denial is used to maintain and to
legitimate violent structures of racial exclusion: “They
want to take what is Ours, therefore, They have to be
excluded.”
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The
first and original information (“We are
taking what is Theirs”) is denied and
projected onto the ‘Other’ (“They are taking
what is Ours”), the Black subject becomes
then what the white subject does not want to
be acquainted with. This is based upon
processes in which split off parts of the
psyche are projected outside, creating the
so called ‘Other’ always as an antagonism of
the ‘self.’ Film is the perfect playground
for this process, while the Black subject
turns into the intrusive enemy, the white
subject becomes the sympathetic hero, that
is, the oppressor becomes the oppressed and
the oppressed the tyrant.
This
splitting evokes the fact that the white
subject is somehow divided within
her-himself, for she/he develops two
attitudes towards external reality: only one
part of the ego—the ‘good,’ accepting and
benevolent—is experienced as ‘self,’ the
rest—the ‘bad,’ rejecting and malevolent—is
projected onto the ‘Other’ and experienced
as external. The ‘Other’ becomes then the
mental representation of what the white
master fears to knowledge about her-himself,
in this case: the violent thief, the
indolent, and malicious robber. |
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Such dishonorable
aspects whose intensity makes them too unpleasurable and
shameful are projected outside onto the ‘Other,’ so as
to escape from them. In psychoanalytical terms, this
allows positive feelings towards oneself to remain
intact (the ‘good’ self), while the manifestations of
the ‘bad’ self are projected onto the outside and seen
as external ‘bad’ objects.
In the white
conceptual world, the Black subject is identified as
that ‘bad’ object, embodying the aspects the white
society has repressed and made taboo. We are, in this
sense, used as a screen of projection for what the white
subject fears to knowledge in itself: aggression and
sexuality. We come to coincide with the threatening, the
dangerous, the violent, the thrilling, the exciting and
also the dirty, but desirable—allowing whiteness to look
at itself as morally ideal, decent, civilized and
majestically generous, in complete control and free of
the anxiety its history causes.
The Wound
Within this
unfortunate psycho-dynamic the Black subject becomes not
only the ‘Other’—the difference against which the white
‘self’ is measured—but also Otherness—the
personification of the repressed aspects of the white
‘self.’ We become what the white subject does not want
to be like. Toni Morrison (1992) uses this expression of
‘unlikeness,’ to describe whiteness as a dependent
identity which exists through the exploitation of the
‘Other,’ a relational identity, constructed by whites
defining themselves as unlike racial ‘Others.’ That is,
Blackness serves as the primary form of Otherness by
which whiteness is constructed.
So, the ‘Other’ is
not other per se, it becomes one through a process of
absolute denial. And in this sense,
Frantz Fanon writes,
What is often called the Black soul is a white man’s
artifact (1968: 110). Reminding us that it is not the
Black subject we are dealing with, but with white
fantasies of what Blackness should be like. Or better,
with dominant images and narratives which are
re-projected onto the Black subject as authoritative and
objective pictures of ourselves. ‘I cannot go to a film.
I wait for me’ (1968: 140), writes Fanon. He waits for
the Black savages, the Black barbarians, the Black
servants, the Black prostitutes, whores and courtesans,
the Black criminals, murders and drug dealers. He waits
for what he is not.
We could actually
say that in film/in the white conceptual world, the
collective unconscious of Black people is like
pre-programmed for alienation, disappointment and
psychic trauma, since the images of Blackness, we are
confronted with, are neither real nor positive. What an
alienation! To be forced to identify with the heroes,
who are white, and to reject the enemies, who are Black.
What a disappointment! To be forced to look at ourselves
as if we were in their place. And what a pain! To be
trapped in this colonial order.
This should be our preoccupation—we should not worry
about the white subject in colonialism, but rather about
the fact that the Black subject is forced to develop a
relationship to her-himself always through the
alienating presence of the white other. Always placed as
the ‘Other,’ never as self. ‘What else could it be for
me,’ asks Fanon, ‘but an amputation, an excision, a
hemorrhage that spattered my whole body with black
blood?’ (1968: 112). He uses the language of trauma,
like most of Black people when speaking of their
everyday racism experiences, indicating the painful
bodily impact and loss characteristic of a traumatic
collapse, for within racism one is surgically removed,
violently separated of whatever identity one might
really have. Such separation is defined as classic
trauma, since it deprives one’s own link with the
society, unconsciously thought of as white.
‘I felt knife
blades open within me,’ ‘I could no longer laugh’
(1968:112) he remarks. There is indeed nothing to laugh
about, as one is being overdeterminated from the outside
by violent fantasies one sees, but one does not
recognize as being oneself.
This is the trauma
of the Black subject, it lies, exactly, in this state of
absolute Otherness in relation to the white subject.
This infernal circle, as Fanon writes, ‘(w)hen people
like me, they tell me it is in spite of my color. When
they dislike me, they point out that it is not because
of my color. Either way, I am locked’ (1968: 116).
Locked within unreason. Fanon believes, therefore, that
Black people’s trauma stem not only from the
family-based events, as classical psychoanalysis argues,
but rather from the traumatizing contact with the
violent unreason of the white world, that is, with the
unreason of racism which places us always as ‘Other.’
The ‘Other’ of the white subject.
Speaking the Silence
The mask raises
many questions: why must the mouth of the Black subject
be fastened? Why must she or he become silent? What
could the Black subject say, if her or his mouth were
not sealed? And what would the white subject have to
listen to? There is an apprehensive fear that if the
colonial subject speaks, the colonizer will have to
listen. It would be forced into an uncomfortable
confrontation with ‘Other’ truths. Truths, which have
been denied, repressed and kept quiet, as secrets. This
phrase “quiet as it’s kept” is an expression of the
African diasporic people, which announces how someone is
about to reveal what is presumed to be a secret –
something which we all know, but which was kept quiet by
force – like the dirty business of racism and its deep
wounds.
 |
The
white fear of listening to what could
possibly be revealed by the Black subject
can be articulated with Sigmund Freud’s
notion of repression, since the ‘essence of
repression’, he writes ‘lies simply in
turning something away, and keeping it at
distance, from the conscious’ (1923: 17). It
is that process by which unacceptable
ideas—and unacceptable truths—are rendered
unconscious, out of awareness due to the
extreme anxiety, guilt or shame they cause.
While buried in the unconscious, however, as
secrets, they remain latent and capable of
being revealed at any moment. Repression is,
in this sense, the defence by which the ego
controls and exercises censorship towards
what is instigated as an ‘unacceptable’
truth.
In a
similar way, the mask sealing the mouth of
the Black subject, prevents her/him from
revealing those truths, which the white
master wants ‘to turn away,’ ‘keep at
distance’ at the margins, invisible and
‘quiet.’ Once confronted with those
uncomfortable truths, such as the brutality
of racism, the white subject commonly
argues: ‘not to know...,’ ‘not to understand
. . .,’ ‘not to remember . . .’ or ‘not to
believe . . .’. |
These are
expressions of this process of repression, in which the
subject resists making the unconscious information,
conscious. That is, one wants to make the known,
unknown. Otherwise, collective secrets of racist
oppression and denied aspects of a ‘dirty’ history would
be revealed.
In order to deny
knowledge of itself as responsible, the colonizer
silences the colonized maintaining the fantasy that only
its own discourse reveal the authentic and universal
truth, while the speech of the colonized is a dubious
subjective interpretation of the reality, not imperative
enough neither to be spoken out, nor to be listened to.
So to say, the mask protects the white subject from
listening to ‘Other’ truths and from acknowledging
‘Other’ knowledges.
The mouth, however, symbolizes not
only speech and enunciation, but also possibility—the
possibility of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ An open mouth can
say one or the other, it can verbalize. Yet, the mask
controls this possibility. Here, the Black subject can
neither say ‘yes’ nor ‘no,’ it becomes impossible. This
impossibility illustrates how speaking and silencing
emerge as an analogous project. The act of speaking is
like a negotiation between those who speak and those who
listen, that is, between the speaking subjects and their
listeners (Castro Varela & Dhawan 2003). Listening is,
in this sense, the act of authorization towards the
speaker. One can (only) speak, when one’s voice is
listened. Within this dialect, those who are listened,
are also those who ‘belong.’ And those who are not
listened, become those who ‘do not belong.’ The mask
re-creates this project of silencing, it controls the
possibility that the colonized might one day be listened
and consequently might belong to the center.
(This is in Remembrance of Our
Ancestors)
Literature
Castro Varela, Maria del Mar &
Dhawan, Nikita (2003). Postkolonialer Feminismus und die
Kunst der Selbstkritik. In Hito Steyerl & Encarnación
Gutiérrez Rodríguez (Hg.) Spricht die Subaltern deutsch?
Migration und postkoloniale kritik. Munster: Unrast
verlag.
Fanon, Frantz (1968).
Black Skins, White Masks. New York: Grove Press.
Freud, Sigmund (1923).
The Ego
and the Id and Other Works. Volume XIX. London:
Vintage.
Morrison, Toni (1992).
Playing
in the Dark. Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.
Vintage Books.
Grada Kilomba—Writer and psychologist, lecturing at
the Free University–Berlin to Psychoanalysis,
Colonialism and Decolonization.
* *
* * *
White Is not a Color
An interview with
author and psychoanalyst Grada Kilomba
The following
interview with Dr. Grada Kilomba, author of
Plantation Memories—Episodes
of Every Day Racism was
first published by The African Times; the
interview was conducted by Stefanie Hirsbrunner. Grada
Kilomba's roots are in São Tomé e Príncipe and Portugal.
Her main interest of research is racism. Kilomba’s
seminar at the Free University in Berlin had to be moved
to one of the biggest lectures halls because so many
students wanted to attend.
Stefanie
Hirsbrunner: How do you explain the huge interest
especially from whites when you talk about racism?
Grada Kilomba:
First of all, important is who teaches, what is being
taught and how. I try to combine traditional academic
scholarship with literature and creative narrative. In
this way, the lecture becomes very artistic and
fascinating for both the students and for me. I learned
this from other authors such as Frantz Fanon.
When you read their
work, you really don’t know where to place it. Is it
poetry? Is it prose? Is it political science? I like
this combination of disciplines and views, which invites
one to look at things in a very complex way. I also find
this a very honest way to reflect on politics because
you speak from your own position.
This is a
perspective that comes from the margins and it is very
new for most of the students. I work with a complete new
generation of students, who are willing to heal their
history, to position themselves anew as well as to work
on their own racism.
Stefanie
Hirsbrunner: Shame is a common reaction when whites
are being confronted with their own racism. How do you
transform this reaction into something productive?
Grada Kilomba:
Working on one’s own racism is a psychological process
and it has nothing to do with morality. It starts with
denial, goes on with guilt and then comes shame, which
allows one to achieve recognition afterward. Once you
have achieved recognition, you can start repairing
structures, the so-called reparation.
White people often
ask: “Am I racist?” This is a moral question, which is
not really productive because the answer would always
be: “Yes.” We have to understand that we are educated to
think in colonial and racist structures. The question
should instead be: “How can I deconstruct my own
racism?” This would be a productive question that
already opposes the first step, denial, and initiates
that psychological process.
Stefanie Hirsbrunner: Can
you explain why you chose to write a book on everyday
racism? What characterizes everyday racism?
Grada Kilomba:
In my writings, I like making this link between past and
present, fantasy and reality, memory and trauma using
remembered stories of slavery and colonialism. It is
interesting how racism in the present is able to place
you back in history. It restages a colonial order:
Whenever a person is confronted with racism at that
precise moment, he or she is being treated as the
subordinate and exotic “other” like in colonial times.
And because this chain to the past and the trauma has
not really been explored yet, I decided to write this
book in the form of psychoanalytical episodes on
everyday racism.
When we speak about
racism, it usually has a macro-political perspective but
black people’s realities, thoughts, feelings and
experiences have been often ignored. That is exactly
what I wanted to have at the center of this book, our
subjective world.
Stefanie
Hirsbrunner: Are there any remarkable differences
between European countries when it comes to racism or
talking about it?
Grada Kilomba:
Yes and no. A critical and reflective view upon the
brutality of colonialism is almost nonexistent in many
European countries. In Germany, on the contrary, I
experience a sense of guilt and shame toward racism,
which is more productive. Nevertheless that happens only
in relation to the Holocaust; when it comes to the
German colonial history, it is unknown even in school
textbooks.
I believe it is a
collective process which Europe has to complete
together, facing its very problematic history of racism,
which started with slavery, followed by colonization and
today’s fortress Europe. Racism has always been in the
center of European politics and this has not changed
until today.
Stefanie
Hirsbrunner: A famous quote from Simone de Beauvoir
goes, “One is not born a woman, but becomes one.” Do you
see any truth in the variation, “One is not born white,
but becomes white?”
Grada Kilomba:
This is a very problematic phrase because one of the big
fantasies of white (people) is having the possibility to
escape their own whiteness, to be able to say: “I am
white, but I am not like other white people.” What is
very important when we talk about racism is to
understand that whiteness is a political identity, which
has the privilege of both being at the center and still
being absent. That is, having the power, but this power
is perceived as neutral and normal. It is precisely this
privilege of remaining unmarked but of marking the
others that characterizes racism.
Stefanie Hirsbrunner: So
what exactly does it mean to be white then?
Grada Kilomba:
White is not a color. White is a political definition,
which represents historical, political and social
privileges of a certain group that has access to
dominant structures and institutions of society.
Whiteness represents the reality and history of a
certain group. When we talk about what it means to be
white, then we talk about politics and certainly not
about biology. Just like the term black is a political
identity, which refers to a historicity, political and
social realities and not to biology.
As we know there
are black people who are very light-skinned, others who
are dark-skinned, others who have blue eyes. It is the
political history and reality that constructs these
terms.
Stefanie
Hirsbrunner: What can white people contribute to the
struggle to overcome racism?
Grada Kilomba:
They should work on themselves, start doing their
homework. That is already enough to ask, compared to the
fact that black people have been doing exactly this for
the past 500 years.
Stefanie
Hirsbrunner: Can whites also be victims of racism?
Grada Kilomba:
This question is illogical. Those who (propagate) racism
do not experience racism. People who exclude, dominate
and oppress cannot be victims of that oppression at the
same time. But they certainly develop a sense of guilt,
which sometimes is confused with being a victim. What
often happens is that, because the sense of guilt is so
overwhelming, the aggressor turns her-/himself into the
victim, and turns the victim into her/his aggressor.
This allows the aggressor to perceive her-/himself as
good and to free themselves from the anxiety their own
racism causes. A black person never has this choice.
Stefanie
Hirsbrunner: Do you believe in a future without
racism?
Grada Kilomba:
No. History and everyday life show me the opposite.
There has been much transformation but also stagnation,
they both co-exist. The fact that Obama is president
does not mean that racism is over; the fact that Merkel
is chancellor does not mean that we reached the end of
sexism. And the fact that the mayor of Berlin is
homosexual does not mean the end of homophobia. But I
still wish very much for a future where people can live
together as equals.
Source:
Africavenir
* *
* * *
Dealing with Racism in Europe (video) /
Africans in academia: Diversity in adversity
* *
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Plantation Memories—Episodes
of Every Day Racism
By
Grada Kilomba
Plantation Memories is a compilation
of episodes of everyday racism. Linking
postcolonial theory and lyrical narrative,
the book provides a new and inspiring
interpretation of everyday racism in the
form of short psychoanalytical stories. From
the question "Where do you come from?" to
the N-Word to Hair Politics, the book is
essential to anyone interested in Black
studies, postcolonialism, critical
whiteness, gender studies and
psychoanalysis.—Unrast Verlag, September 2008 / "What a
beautiful N.! Look how nice the N. looks"
says a girl to Kathleen. Kathleen is
shocked, for she didn't expect to be
perceive as the inferior 'Other.' This
moment of surprise and pain describes
everyday racism as a mise-en-scéne where
whites suddenly become symbolic masters and
Blacks, through insult and humiliation,
become figurative slaves. Unexpectedly, the
past comes to coincide with the present and
the present is experienced as if one were in
that agonizing past, as the title Plantation
Memories announces.—Publisher |
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* * *
Table
of Contents Plantation Memories
* * *
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Frantz Fanon Documentary—Black Skin, White Mask
Explores the
life and work of the psychoanalytic theorist and activist Frantz
Fanon who was born in Martinique, educated in Paris and worked in
Algeria. Examines Fanon's theories of identity and race, and traces
his involvement in the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria and
throughout the world.
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* *
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Fanon: A Novel by
John Edgar Wideman.
A philosopher,
psychiatrist, and political activist, Frantz Fanon
(1925–1961) was a fierce, acute critic of racism and
oppression. Born of African descent in Martinique in
1925, Fanon fought in defense of France during World War
II but later against France in Algeria’s war for
independence. His last book,
The Wretched of the Earth, published in 1961,
inspired leaders of diverse liberation movements: Steve
Biko in South Africa, Che Guevara in Latin America, the
Black Panthers in the States. Wideman’s novel is
disguised as the project of a contemporary African
American novelist, Thomas, who undertakes writing a life
of Fanon. The result is an electrifying mix of
perspectives, traveling from Manhattan to Paris to
Algeria to Pittsburgh. Part whodunit, part screenplay,
part love story, Fanon introduces the French film
director Jean-Luc Godard to the ailing Mrs. Wideman in
Homewood and chases the meaning of Fanon’s legacy
through our violent, post-9/11 world, which seems
determined to perpetuate the evils Fanon sought to
rectify. |
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Ghosts in Our Blood
With Malcolm X in Africa, England, and the Caribbean
By Jan R.
Carew
Carew, an
activist, scholar, and journalist, met Malcolm X
during his last trip abroad only a few weeks before
he was killed in 1965. It made such an impression on
Carew that he felt compelled to search out Malcolm's
family and friends in order to flesh out the family
history. He interviewed Wilfred (Malcolm's older
brother) and a Grenadian friend of Malcolm's mother
named Tanta Bess. Comparing his family's experiences
with that of Malcolm X, he gives the most complete
picture yet of Malcolm's mother. Carew also offers a
tantalizing glimpse of Malcolm X's transforming
himself into El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, a man less
blinded by his own racial prejudices yet as
committed to the betterment of his race as ever.
Just before his death, Malcolm X became convinced
that a U.S. agency was involved with those trying to
kill him, and Carew here reveals the evidence
Malcolm X gave him to support these beliefs. The
mystery of Malcolm's death remains unresolved, and
we are once again filled with regret that he was cut
down before he could fulfill the promise of his
later days. While this book will not replace The
Autobiography of Malcolm X (LJ 1/1/66), it is an
important supplement. All libraries that own the
autobiography should also purchase this one.—Library
Journal |
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* * * * *
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In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience
By Howard Dodson
Always on the move, resourceful, and creative, men and women of African origin have been risk-takers in an exploitative and hostile environment. Their survival skills, efficient networks, and dynamic culture have enabled them to thrive and spread, and to be at the very core of the settling and development of the Americas. Their migrations have changed not only their world, and the fabric of the African Diaspora but also their nation and the Western Hemisphere.
Between 1492 and 1776, an estimated 6.5 million people migrated to the Americas. More than 5 out of 6 were Africans. The major colonial labor force, they laid the economic and cultural foundations of the continents. Their migrations continued during and after slavery. In the United States alone, 6.5 million African Americans left the South for northern and western cities between 1916 and 1970. With this internal Great Migration, the most massive in the history of the country, African Americans stopped being a southern, rural community to become a national, urban population.
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The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a
sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi
for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin
was falsely accused of stealing a white
man's turkeys and was almost beaten to
death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling,
a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem
after learning of the grove owners'
plans to give him a "necktie party" (a
lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for
the United States Army and couldn't
operate in his own home town." Anchored
to these three stories is Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's
magnificent, extensively researched
study of the "great migration," the
exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into
the novelistic narratives of Gladney,
Starling, and Pershing settling in new
lands, building anew, and often finding
that they have not left racism behind.
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* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
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Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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