Frantz Fanon

 

In the early pages of the chapter entitled “The Lived Experience of the Black Man,” Frantz Fanon describes “the body schema,” the embodied experience of fluid, confident movement. Why is the experience of this kind of movement not available to Fanon? What is the historical-racial schema and what is its relationship to the body schema (see pgs. 90—91)? Now consider Fanon’s discussion of language. What does he mean when he says that “to speak a language is to appropriate its world and culture” (p. 21)? What is the problem with the world and culture he has appropriated in speaking French? How might we interpret Fanon’s thought as in agreement with the thought of Nietzsche?

Fanon, in chapter four, distinguishes between truth and objectivity; Fanon rejects the idea that we can get to the truth from an objective standpoint. Though Fanon is an advocate and agrees with the idea of getting to the truth, searching for the truth through objectivity is a notion that is not useful because of colonialism. Fanon argues colonizers justify their acts by stating that the colonized people were violent "savages" themselves and believe white people were superior. Fanon's issue is that society gives black people the problem to become "white" because of the racist culture. So, whiteness associates itself with goodness and completeness. By attempting to become white, in return, it will not help the black people; by doing such things, the problems will probably worsen. Fanon senses the solidarity with Jewish people from a distance because of the oppressions that differ in nature. Besides his solidarity with the Jewish people, he cannot connect with other black people who have rejected their blackness. In return, racisms produce different areas in which people of color isolate themselves because of discrimination. The feeling of self-hatred and alienation will then take place as an issue for the black man. Therefore, "the body schema," the embodied experience of fluid, confident movement, is not available.

Fanon states the “bodily schema,” in which he argues that because “historical-racial schema” when one exists because of the history of racism and makes it as there is no “bodily schema” just because of the conditions that come with blackness. Hence, some else or a society cannot perceive their single “bodily schema” since black people represent their race and history, no further than their phenotype. “The real world challenged my claims. In the white world the man of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema. Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third-person consciousness. The body is surrounded by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty.” (pg. 110) Fanon states, "the racist who creates interiorized" racism is caused by the very concept of race that is developed through time, "race" is a hierarchical invention that is meaningful. Since there is no universal black-schema as he describes “no longer a question of being aware of my body in the third person but in a triple person…I was responsible for my body, for my race, for my ancestors.” (foreword) So as long as a black man live and is among its people, he will not have instances unless in minor inner conflicts so that his “being” is then experienced through others.

The way Fanon thinks of a language other than in terms of syntax, how sentences come together. There is another function of language, that we assume a culture and we bear a civilization. And another aspect of language that shapes our world. The world then shapes how we speak in which we find ourselves. Also, another part of speech is the notion of language that is imposed in a colonized way. That the language that the colonizers impose on the people, can never really learn how to speak the language, if they do, they are exceptional but still unlike those who are, no matter how well those colonized people speak the language. In France, for instance, people will always assume they cannot speak the colonizer language, and because of that notion, those who are occupied are less than those from whom that language came from. In return, people will signal on those colonized when speaking to the colonized people in a certain way.

Fanon introduces the concept of “non-being,” which is the zone of “non-being” in hell; Fanon puts it in a way in which a black man confronts an anti-black world. This world is all the black man knows, which hides this “non-being.” Hence, the black man subscribes his condition to the world as a place and role as a servile Blackman in the world. “There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinarily sterile and arid region, an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born. In most cases, the black man lacks the advantage of being able to accomplish this descent into a real hell.” (pg. 10) Unlike Nietzsche, this descent does not describe nihilism; instead, it is a yes that vibrates “to cosmic harmonies.” (pg. 10). For Nietzsche, nihilism arises from weariness but is a necessary transition to re-valuate all known values; hence when one loses the basis of his value system, he becomes a nihilist.

To return to Fanon, he presents, the “non-being” that produces this “yes” which is a revolutionary potential because the anti-black person cannot contain the black life. Like in the colonial situation in France, which has a positive schema, although limiting in a lot of ways, still includes opportunities for creativity by creating oneself. But it involves working against the colonizers, that the person who has been colonized no longer takes their culture as the telos (the end goal), what it means to be fully human. So, Fanon and Nietzsche have some agreements because Fanon has an existential Nietzschean moment. He argues that the man who ceased and ended such truths that have worked for himself through time must stop projecting to the world. That includes the opportunities for creativity, one's uniqueness, to work them into a positive schema. Like Nietzsche, in which the “free spirits” means the ideal way of taking up the old beliefs and work them into a new creative expression of one’s uniqueness. Hence, the active form is the “yes-saying” to expand into all and greater possibilities.