Samantha Banner LITS3303 February 28,2017 BLACK SKIN WHITE MASK Chapter 6: The Negro and psychopathology by Frantz fanon Samantha Banner LITS3303 February 28,2017 ””Can the white man behave healthily toward the black ma and can the black man behave healthily towards the white man?" pg.210

FRANTZ FANON Born in 1925, died at the age of 36 Psychiatrist and philosopher This chapter was published in 1956

DEFINITIONS Erlebnisse : experiences, something that one has lived through Neurosis : mild illness that is not caused by organic disease involving symptoms of stress Phobia : A neurosis characterized by the anxious fear of an object. Antilles : Sub-region of North America Collective Unconscious : organizes with each member of a particular species

Definition CONT. Pathology : refers to an abnormality or disease Psychopathology : is a disturbance or problem in a person’s psychological makeup or how a person thinks about themselves and their world

ANALYSIS provides an explanation of:how racism and colonialism affect the psychology, specifically of Blacks Fanon’s argument is that many psychological problems Black people faced were caused by racism. Focuses on the relationship between Black people and cultural representations of Blackness He explores the cultural stories children are exposed to. Fanon argues, all cultures has adventure stories and children naturally identify with the hero.

analysis Racist societies have white heroes meaning that even in the Antilles, where the majority of people are Black, all the stories about explorers are still about white people, because the culture is controlled by France. "There is identification- that is, the young Negro subjectively adopts a white man's attitude." (pg. 204) Black children read these stories and naturally identify with the white explorer. But as they grow up and realize they are Black causing a crisis. Realizing they were not a hero all along, but the of the unexplored lands the hero is discovering. Thus, experiencing a psychological disturbance that is a product of the white culture they are a part of.

analysis As a consequence of cultural representations in which the hero is always white, the Black person who first identified with the white hero now wants to become white himself. There aren’t representations of Black heroes; to become a hero, you have to become white. Resulting in the desire to become white, to not be one’s self. Losing the self results in the lost of the ability to act in the world, their agency.

analysis representations of Black people are almost always as a kind of beast. "Negros are made inferior" (pg.205) White people, confronted with Blackness, cast this otherness as a difference in species. Black people’s difference makes them subhuman in a racist society. Therefore, Black people are represented as animalistic, irrational, and dominated by physical desire.

analysis Blacks are often over-sexualized. Whites have minds but Black people are primarily bodies and reduced to symbolizing the “biological.” Since human life is produced through sex, the Black man is reduced to his, creating a fear the Black “beast” who is considered to have a larger penis and more virile sexuality. White women then need to be “protected” from Black men who are walking genitals, according to Fanon. Black people are beasts with different and frightening bodies.

analysis Fanon then links the Black and Jewish to show the intellectual landscape. In the 1950s and 1960s, Jean-Paul Sartre and the existential school of thought dominated the French intellectual scene. Fanon positions himself in a place of relevance and importance in French philosophy by discussing him. Fanon also shows the need for further study by showing how Sartre cannot by himself explain the Black experience. Showing that no one school of thought is adequate for thinking about racism. Hence why he draws ideas from psychoanalysis to cultural study.