Postcolonialism by Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)

Introduction

In a time of anti-colonial liberation struggle, Frantz Omar Fanon (1925–1961), who was born on the island of Martinique under French colonial control, was one of the most significant thinkers in black Atlantic theory.

His writing draws inspiration from a variety of literary genres as well as psychology, philosophy, and political theory, and it has had a significant, long-lasting impact on the global South. In his lifetime, he released The Wretched of the Earth in 1961 and Black Skin, White Masks in 1952, both of which are important original works. A Dying Colonialism (1959) and Toward the African Revolution (1964), two collections of articles released posthumously. Additionally, he was given a position in psychiatry in 1953.

One of the more intriguing topics of academic debate is Fanon's approach in Black Skin, White Masks, which is a challenging question. The text's main method is existential-phenomenological, as evidenced by the vivid, nuanced personal stories that draw on the key elements of the fictionalised incident of anti-blackness.

Language, emotion, sexuality, gender, race and racism, religion, social formation, time, and many other topics were addressed by Fanon in his writings. His involvement in the Algerian revolutionary struggle caused him to broaden his conceptions of colonialism, the anti-colonial movement, and visions of a postcolonial culture and society, which replaced his earlier theorizations of blackness.

The initial studies by Fanon take into account a variety of diseases brought on by colonial aggression. Some of them are mental disorders, which Fanon defines as generalised anxiety brought on by colonial dominance and manifested in specific facets of the personality. Others cause sexual disorders linked to colonial degradations of femininity and masculinity or bear the disorder on the body and deform the person from the inside out.

Fanon's succinct claim that "Black people are locked in blackness and white people are locked in whiteness" is summarised in the book's introduction along with other significant findings and analytical cornerstones.

Fanon connects the calculative logic of colonial rule with the existential experience of racialized subjectivity. This is crucial: colonialism is a complete project in Fanon's eyes. It is a project that touches every aspect of human being and their world.

Concept of Self and Other

The psychological implications of colonialism on both the colonizer and the colonized were examined in his key writings, The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and Black Skin, White Masks (1967). Through representation and discourse, the native, according to Fanon, develops a sense of "self" as defined by the "colonial master," but the colonizer does the opposite and feels superior. As a result, Fanon creates a psychoanalytical theory of postcolonialism in which he contends that the European "Self" grows through interaction and relation to the "Other."

The native makes an effort to be as white as possible by embracing Western ideas, religion, language, and rituals while rejecting his own culture to cope with his psychological inferiority. Fanon describes this phenomenon as people wearing white masks over black skin, creating a dualism and a schizophrenic environment. Violence, a kind of self-assertion, is a further effect of the colonized's sense of inadequacy and insecurity.

Sense of Inadequacy and Inferiority

According to Fanon, colonised people have feelings of inferiority and inadequacy that lead to violence, which the locals view as a means of expressing their own identity. When the native realises, he cannot completely become "white," violence even breaks out against other indigenous. Tribal wars, in which the natives turn against one another while tormented by a failure to turn against the colonial master, are an example of this violence, according to Fanon, which is caused by the colonial system.

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