Through The Zone of Nonbeing: A Reading of Black Skin, White Masks in Celebration of Fanon's Eightieth Birthday

Through the Zone of Nonbeing:
A Reading of Black Skin, White Masks in Celebration of

Fanons Eightieth Birthday
*
!
LEWIS R. GORDON

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anon was an ironic writer who was struggling with the complex question o paradoxical reason
and paradoxical history. 1he modern collapse o Reason` and listory` into all things
Luropean represented a faitvre o Reason and listory that required sel-deception regarding
Lurope`s scope. Put dierently: Lurope sought to become ovtotogicat, it sought to become what
dialecticians call Absolute Being.` Such Being stood in the way o bvvav being or a human way o
being. It thus presented itsel as a theodicy. 1heodicy is the branch o inquiry that attempts to
account or the compatibility o God`s omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness in the ace o
injustice and eil. 1here are seeral ormulations o the problem: I God has the power to do
something about injustice and eil, why doesn`t le I God has created eerything, and God is
perect, how could God create imperect ,oten eil, beings I God has oreknowledge, how could
we continue to insist on God`s goodness when le had adanced knowledge o the consequences o
his creation 1here hae been many classical eorts to address this problem. 1he most inluential
has been St. Augustine`s insistence, in 1be Cit, of Coa, that God`s loe or humanity required human
reedom, and reedom requires the ability to do right or wrong. 1he problem does not only emerge
in the \estern tradition. Among the Akan o Ghana, or instance, the problem emerges as well, and
solutions similar to St. Augustine`s hae been posed by, or example, the Ghanian philosopher
Kwame Gyekye.
1
1here, the Akan Supreme Being, Onyam!, is supposed to be the orce ,.vv.vv,
behind and through all Being. Is le, then, the source o eil as well 1heodicy does not disappear
with modern secularism. \hateer is adanced as a Supreme Being or Supreme Source o
Legitimacy aces a similar critical challenge.
l
Rationalizations o \estern thought oten led to a theodicy o \estern ciilization, o
\estern ciilization as a system that was complete on all leels o human lie, on leels o
description ,what is, and prescription ,what ought to be,, o being and alue, while its
incompleteness, its ailure to be so, lied by those constantly being crushed under its heels, remained
a constant source o anxiety oten in the orm o social denial. People o color, particularly black
people, lied the contradictions o this sel-deception continually through attempting to lie this
theodicy in good aith. 1his lied contradiction emerged because a demand oten imposed upon
people o color is that they accept the tenets o \estern ciilization without being criticat beings.
Critical consciousness asks not only whether systems are consistently applied, but also whether the
systems themseles are compatible with other projects, especially humanistic ones. 1ake, or
instance, Rationality. Rationality emerges in many systems ,especially modern liberalism, as ree, say,
o racist adulteration. \hat should we make, then, o Racist Rationality An explosion erupts in the
soul o a black person, an explosion that splits the black person into two souls, as \.L.B. Du Bois

!
From The C.L.R. James Journal 11, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 143.

2 | !orta. c Kvorteage. Otberri.e | lall 2006
obsered in 1be ovt. of tac/ ot/ and the earlier Conseration o the Races,` with a consciousness
o a rozen outside,` o a being purely as seen by others, in the ace o the lied-experience o an
inside,` o a being who is able to see that he or she is seen as a being without a point o iew,
which amounts to not being seen as a human being.
2
Such interplay o ironic dimensions o sight
and thought, o doubled doubling, are hallmarks o lanon`s thought.

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lanon begins tac/ /iv, !bite Ma./. by announcing a subjunctie explosion` that is either too
soon` or too late` ,Pv 5, , and then conesses that there was a ire` in him that has cooled
suiciently to address the truths` at hand.
3
le wasn`t kidding. lis brother Jobi recounts, in Isaac
Julien`s ravt avov: tac/ /iv, !bite Ma./. ,199,, isiting him during his studies at Lyon. A
aculty member described lanon to Jobi as lireworks on the outside, ireworks on the inside!`
1his moti o iery aect recurs in the book. le recalls anger ,ire, that has now become sober
,cooled,. Sobriety here does not mean an absence o heat. 1hroughout the work, lanon struggles
to hold the ire at bay, the result o which is an ongoing heat that occasionally bursts into lame.
Cooled, he relects sardonically on modern liberalism-equal rights and raternity-and the many
ways in which modern thinkers hae attempted to address the so-called black problem.` Still,` he
relects, a single line would be enough. Supply a single answer and the black problem will lose its
seriousness. \hat do blacks want`,,Pv 6 , 8,.
1he conergence o the black problem` with desire ,want`, already marks a distinction in
lanon`s analysis. \hen Du Bois considered the black problem hal a century earlier, he argued
against the question itsel, it conuses, he argued, blacks with their problems. Blacks themseles are
not the problem. 1he problem is the tendency to construct blacks as the problem, and that
construction oten emerged rom white communities. By adding the dimension o what blacks
want, lanon raises the question o the subjectie lie o blacks, o black consciousness, that parallels
the lreudian question o women-what do women want 1his question o want, o desire, is not as
simple as it may at irst seem, or the lie o desire is pre-relectie and relectie. \hat one claims
to want is not always what one actually wants. And what one actually wants could become discarded
upon relection. 1hat lanon has raised the subjectie lie raises, as well, the split between lied-
reality and structure. An indiidual black`s desire may not comport with the structural notions o
black desire. As lanon cautions the reader, Many Negroes will not ind themseles in what
ollows. 1his is equally true o many whites. But the act that I eel a oreigner in the worlds o the
schizophrenic or the sexual cripple in no way diminishes their reality` ,Pv 9 , 12,. le airms this
ocus later on: I am speaking here, on the one hand, o alienated ,mystiied, blacks, and, on the
other, o no less alienated ,mystiying and mystiied, whites`,Pv 23 , 29,.
lanon raises this schism between indiidual and structure through making an important
distinction. 1hat the study o the black as a orm o human study requires understanding what he
calls ovtogevic and b,togevic approaches. Ontogenic approaches address the indiidual organism.
Phylogenic approaches address the species. 1he distinction pertains to the indiidual and structure.
lanon adds that such distinctions oten miss a third actor-the .ociogevic. 1he sociogenic pertains to
what emerges rom the social world, the intersubjectie world o culture, history, language,
economics. In that world, he reminds us, it is the human being who brings such orces into
existence. \hat does recognition o such a actor oer our understanding o the black problem and
what blacks want
1he black is marked by the dehumanizing bridge between indiidual and structure posed by
antiblack racism, the black is, in the end, anonymous,` which enables the black` to collapse into
blacks.` \hereas blacks` is not a proper name, antiblack racism makes it unction as such, as a
GORDON | 1hrough the Zone o Nonbeing | 3
name o amiliarity that closes o the need or urther knowledge. Lach black is, thus, ironically
nameless by irtue o being vavea black.` So blacks ind themseles, lanon announces at the
outset, not structurally regarded as human beings. 1hey are problematic beings, beings locked in
what he calls a zone o nonbeing.` \hat blacks want is not to be problematic beings, to escape
rom that zone. 1hey want to be human in the ace o a structure that denies their humanity. In
eect, this zone` can be read in two ways. It could be limbo, which would place blacks below
whites but aboe creatures whose lots are worse, or it could simply mean the point o total absence,
the place most ar rom the light that, in a theistic system, radiates reality, which would be hell. lis
claim that In the majority o cases, the black lacks the beneit o being able to accomplish this
descent into a real hell ,vfer.,` ,Pv , 8, suggests the irst read, but lanon has much in store or
the reader. lor een i the majority` o blacks lack such ability, it does not ollow that in tbi. ca.e-
namely, lanon`s unolding narratie-the descent into vfer. cannot be made. Such thoughts
suggest that although the text has an epigraph rom Aim Csaire`s Di.covr. .vr te cotoviati.ve, the
suering o which he speaks gains its poetic laor rom the mythopoetics o hell that hae
goerned many writers in the western world-namely, Dante Alighieri`s vfervo.
4
1hat lanon`s
ormal education was exclusiely western, and that the Martinique o his childhood was ,and
continues to be, predominantly Roman Catholic means that the grammar o normatie lie would
take the orm o the Church`s ounding imagery in spite o lanon`s existential atheism. 1he
connection with Dante`s mythopoetic ision o church doctrine raises the question, howeer, o
lanon`s role in the text. Is lanon Dante the seeker threatened by sin ,the ire` he brought to
truth, or Virgil the ,cooled`, guide rom Limbo Or is he both 1he social world is such that it is
not simply a forvat mediation o phylogeny and ontogeny. It also oers the content, the aesthetics,
the lied` dimensions o mediation. lanon our guide, then, plans to take us through the layers o
mediation oered to the black. As such, he unctions as Virgil guiding us through a world that
many o us, being imbeciles,` need but oten reuse to see. So, utilizing lanon`s obseration o
sociogenic dimensions o this structural denial, the argument takes the ollowing turn.

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1here is a white construction called the black.` 1his construction is told that i he or she really is
human, then he or she can go beyond the boundaries o race. 1he black can really` choose` to
lie otherwise as a orm o social being that is not black and is not any racial ormation. Racial
constructions are leaches on all maniestations o human ways o liing: language, sex, labor
,material and aesthetic,, socializing ,reciprocal recognition,, consciousness, the soul.` Chapters 1
through thus become portraits o an anonymous black hero`s eorts to shake o these leaches and
lie an adult human existence. Lach chapter represents options oered the black by modern
\estern thought. In good aith, then, the black hero attempts to lie through each o these options
simply as a human being. But the black soon discoers that to do so calls or liing simply as a
white. Antiblack racism presents whiteness as the normal` mode o humanness.` So, the black
reasons, i blackness and whiteness are constructed, perhaps the black could then lie the white
construction, which would reinorce the theme o constructiity. Lach portrait, howeer, is a tale o
how exercising this option leads to ailure. And in act, ailure` takes on a peculiar role in the
work, it is the specialized sense in which lanon is using the term psychoanalysis`: I there can be
no discussion on a philosophical leel-that is, the plane o the basic needs o human reality-I am
willing to work on the psychoanalytical leel-in other words, the leel o the ailures,` in the sense
in which one speaks o engine ailures`,Pv 18 , 23,. \e should bear in mind that he says willing
to` work so, or, as we will see, lanon raises, as well, the question o whether the approach o
working on the leel o ailure is, too, a orm o ailure, which raises the question o whether such a
psychoanalytical approach is exempliied or transcended.
1he moti o ailure raises, still more, the question o the t,e o text he has composed and
how he is situated in relation to that text. \hat we ind is that each ailure is not necessarily lanon`s
ailure, or he is both the oice o the text ,the black, and the oice abovt the text ,the theorist and
guide,. 1hus, although lanon the hero o the text, the black, constantly ails, lanon the critic o
\estern discourses o Man, lanon the reolutionary theorist who demands systemic and systematic
change, succeeds. Paradoxically, i the hero o the text wins ,that is, achiees his aims,, the hero o
thought ,the theorist, ails, and ice ersa. 1hus, ater announcing in the introduction that
ontogenic and phylogenic explanations ail and need to be mediated by sociogenic explanations with
a recognition o human agency, he charts the course o the black with these theoretical idols` o
humanization. Like lriedrich Nietzsche, who sought to break the idols o ,and, thus, idolatry in,
\estern ciilization, lanon hopes to destroy the idols that militate against the human spirit in an
antiblack racist world.
1he transormatie orce o linguistic mastery is one such idol. Language is a construction
that has the orce o orming reality. 1aking heed o Marx`s encomium in his eleenth thesis on
leuerbach-Philosophers hae only ivterretea the world in arious ways, the point is to cbavge it`-
lanon adances the godlike quality o this dictum through Paul Valry`s obseration that language is
the god gone astray in the lesh.`
5
1o transorm language, then, is the godlike project o
transorming reality. Language is, howeer, embodied. llesh and language are, in other words,
symbiotic. lanon is here reerring to the phenomenological iew o body and lesh, they reer, as
well, to consciousness. Consciousness is always embodied consciousness o things, including o
intersubjectie consciousness or the social world. 1hat language inests meaning in those who
embody it means, then, that the transormation o language entails the transormation o language-
users. 1he black, thus, takes it upon him or hersel to transorm the world through a dierent
language o sel-presentation. le or she attempts to lie words that transcend, i not eradicate,
blackness. 1he eorts are amiliar: I am not black, I am brown.` I am not black, I am a mulatto.`
I am not black, I am Martinican.` I am not black, I am lrench.` I am not black, I am simply a
human being.` 1he result is tragicomic. lanon recounts many instances o the black struggling to
wear and thereby express non-blackness-the eort at ontological transormation by departure
rom colored colonies to liing or a time in Paris, the lrench metropole, where the Reality Principle
awaits ,in Paris, there are real` lrench people, so by becoming Parisian, one really` becomes
lrench,, the struggle with the r-eating tongue, which lanon describes as a wretchedly lazy organ,`
as in the case o the newly-arried Martinican who knows the stereotype-]e .vi. Mativiqvai., cè.t ta
evie foi. qve ;e riev. ev avce ,I come om Matinique, it is my ust time in lance`,-has practiced
rolling his rs to the point o yelling, Garrron! Un e de bie. ,\aiterrr! Bing me a beya!`,
6
lanon
recounts admonitions rom his childhood against speaking Creole and adocacy o speaking real
lrench,` lrench lrench,` that is, white` lrench. 1he phenomenon is amiliar in the Spanish-
and Lnglish-speaking Caribbean. In the Anglo Caribbean, one is admonished against speaking atoi.
and encouraged to speak the Queen`s Lnglish.` Such lrench, Spanish, and Lnglish-and in other
areas, Dutch, German, Portuguese, and Italian-oer words o whiteness. A critic may be quick to
respond that there is an important class dimension to this obseration, or certain ways o speaking
the dominant language oer, as well, economic mobility. lanon, howeer, has a powerul response.
1he black`s eort at transormatie linguistic perormance is a comedy o errors, instead o
being a transormer o words, the black is considered to be, as we hae seen, a predator` o words,
and een where the black has mastered` the language, the black discoers in those cases that he or
she becomes linguistically dangerous. Against the class critique, lanon obseres that the black neer
speaks whiteness as een working-class whites speak whiteness. Such whites speak whiteness
bookishly,` whereas people o color speak whiteness whitely` or white-like.` Speaking whiteness
whitelike means that the black does not achiee the normatie escape that he or she seeks but the
limitation o what some theorists call semiotic play.` Semiotic play reers to the actiity o taking
seriousness out o the use o signs and symbols o a language. Seriousness is absolute, it leaes no
option. It collapses the world into material alues,` where there is supposedly no ambiguity.
\hite-like` and whitely` signiy imitation. 1he black, thus, becomes a masquerade, a black
wearing a white linguistic mask. 1he tragedy, in this tragicomedy, is that such a mask signiies a
monstrosity, a danger:

Nothing is more astonishing than to hear a black express himsel properly, or then
in truth he is putting on the white world. I hae had occasion to talk with students
o oreign origin. 1hey speak lrench badly: Little Crusoe, alias Prospero, is at ease
then. le explains, inorms, interprets, helps them with their studies ,Pv 30 , 36,.

1he reerence to Crusoe and Prospero are, o course, to the allegory o their relation to lriday and
Caliban. In both Steenson`s Robiv.ov Crv.oe and Shakespeare`s 1eve.t, the white interloper
exercises dominion oer the island natie who seeks the powers o the interloper`s ways o
knowing-in other words, language and science. 1he impact o this allegory on modern thought is
tremendous, to the point o there now emerging ways o knowing` that attempt to understand, i
not alleiate, lriday`s and Caliban`s condition. lriday and Caliban did, ater all, hae ways o
knowing that preceded Crusoe`s and Prospero`s conquest o their islands. lrom such a perspectie,
the study o Luropean ciilizations become Crusoe or Prospero studies, and the eort to
understand lriday`s and Caliban`s situation ,which incorporates their knowledge o Crusoe and
Prospero,, lriday or Caliban studies. lanon`s description o the danger is Calibanist: Prospero ,the
white, is sae so long as Caliban ,the black, or perhaps more on the mark, the nigger`, struggles
with instead o masters` the language o mastery.
It is a double-standard that is demanded:

Blacks are human i they can speak white, but i they can speak white, they are dangerous, thereore,
they must be reminded o their limitation: \es, the black is supposed to be a good nigger. . . . And
naturally, just as a Jew who spends money without thinking about it is suspect, a black who quotes
Montesquieu had better be watched.` More: \hen a Negro talks o Marx, the irst reaction is
always the same: \e hae brought you up to our leel and now you turn against your beneactors.
Ingrates! Obiously nothing can be expected o you.` And then too there is that bludgeoned
argument o the plantation-owner in Arica: Our enemy is the teacher` ,both quotes rom Pv 2-28
, 35,. le then urther inokes Prospero`s point o iew through an excerpt rom Dr. Michel
Salmon`s Pre.evce .fricaive article, Dùn jui a des negres` ,lrom a Jew to the Negroes`,, which he
cites in note 11 o that chapter. \rites Salmon, as quoted by lanon:

I knew some Negroes in the school o Medicine ... in a word, they were a
disappointment, the color o their skin should hae permitted them to gie v. the
opportunity to be charitable, generous, or scientiically riendly. 1hey were derelict
in this duty, this claim on our good will.... \e had no Negroes to condescend to,
nor did we hae anything to hate them or, they counted or irtually as much as we
in the scale o the little jobs and petty chicaneries o daily lie.

1he black inds no direction that oers solitude here. Colored discourses represent a
lowering.` 1o demand whites to speak to blacks with tbat discourse signiies condescension. 1o
speak to whites in tbeir language represents usurpation. 1he recourse o both colored and white
reality is oten the same to such a black: \ou had better keep your place` ,Pv 26 , 34,.
1here is, as well, or some whites who may hae transcended ear, the moment o marel in
the ace o blacks who hae mastered the dominant language. lanon cites Andr Breton`s
introduction to Aim Csaire`s classic poetic anticolonial work, Cabier a`vv retovr av a,. vatat, where
Breton declared: lere is a black man who handles the lrench language as no white man today
can,` to which lanon replies: . . . I do not see why there should be any paradox, anything to
outline, or in truth M. Aim Csaire is a natie o Martinique and a uniersity graduate` ,Pv 31 ,
40,. 1he black teleision reporter who speaks as white reporters speak, the black attorney who
speaks as white attorneys speak, the black medical doctor who speaks as white medical doctors
speak, the black uniersity proessor who speaks as other uniersity proessors speak, and on and
on, why do these proessionals` .eecb oten surprise, and at times shock and righten, other times
arouse, those who hear them
1he promise o language proes limited. Semiotic resistance, albeit important-lanon, ater
all, admonishes the use o condescending language-at times intensiies the problem instead o
alleiating it. Mastering the language or the sake o recognition a. rbite relects a dependency that
subordinates the black`s humanity. As Chester lontenot succinctly summarizes this conclusion: . . .
the Blacks unwittingly place themseles in an inerior, compromising position to that o the whites.
1he Blacks` attempts to assert themseles against the colonialists sere to imply that they seek
recognition rom the colonialists, and are, thereore, relegated to an inerior status.`
8
1o its credit,
howeer, the intensiication o the problem brings it into ocus. A signiicance o language is its
inherent publicity. lailing a public retreat, the black may now moe inward, to the priate sphere,
to the sexual sphere, or solitude.

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lanon`s discussion o psychosexual retreat has receied much criticism. It has been the basis o
accusations o his being misogynous because o his discussion o women o color and especially his
criticisms o Mayotte Capcia`s autobiographical noel ]e .vi. Martiviqvai.e and her ollow-up noel,
a vegre..e btavcbe.
9
1he irst is ordinarily translated as .v Martivicav, but the e` on the end
signiies the author`s gender, which renders the translation literally as .v Martivicav !ovav. 1o
smoothen the Lnglish, one could add an article, rendering it as .v a Martivicav !ovav. 1here is
much ambiguity here, howeer, or the author stands as more than a` Martinican woman, gien the
way texts by black authors are read. She stands as Martinican womanòr worse-tbe Martinican
woman.` 1he second book`s title is straightorward, gien her use o the deinite article la`: 1be
!bite êgre... 1he back-and-orth in the critical literature on lanon`s treatment o Capcia`s irst
book has been such that one commentator, 1. Denean Sharpley-\hiting, wrote an account and
criticism o how the debate has spilled oer into a debate on lanon and eminism.
10
I hae oten
wondered i many o the critics actually reaa what lanon said instead o commentaries on what he is
reputed to hae said. 1hat being so, I should like to state here that there are laws in arguments that
expect symmetry in analyses ocused on the absence o symmetry, and it is unclear to me how lanon
is expected to hae written on the two main accounts o women o color, Capcia`s and A. Sadji`s,
without the criticisms he has oered as part o his ongoing argument.
11

lanon announced that he was examining pathological cases, cases o the phobic, cases o
ailure. 1hroughout the text, I don`t see how one could deend the claim that black men, especially
lrancophone ones, are particularly well. 1hey are tragicomic searchers o recognition, ull-o-
themseles isitors in Paris who return to the \est Indies to be deiied,` deluded searchers o
ciilization in a pair o white breasts,` pathetic slaes in search o whiteness through, i not white
women, at least mulattas who condescendingly oer a bit o whiteness, and on and on. Added to
this treatment is lanon`s relationship with his ather. 1he relationship is the stu o which drama
could be made, his hostility to the man was such that it seemed at best insensitie, i not cruel.
lanon acted as though he only had a mother, especially during his years in North Arica and
Southern Lurope during \orld \ar II, as we see in this correspondence on the ee o a dangerous
mission:

Papa, you were sometimes remiss in your duty as a ather. I I allow mysel to so
judge you, it`s because I am no longer o this lie. 1hese are the reproaches o one
rom the Beyond. Mama was sometimes made unhappy because o you. She was
already unhappy because o us.... I we, your eight children, hae become something,
it`s Mama alone who must be gien the glory.... I can see the expression you`ll make
in reading these lines, but it`s the truth. Look at yoursel, look at all the years gone
by, bare your soul and hae the courage to say, I deserted them.` Okay, repentant
churchgoer, come back to the old.
12

le states repeatedly in tac/ /iv, !bite Ma./. that the black man is not a man, and he
mentions, as we hae seen, seeking his irility, his manhood, in his loer. Although he is speaking
iguratiely-as something that people generally do-he is also speaking autobiographically.
lanon`s behaior makes sense i we take heed o his growing up in a colonized Caribbean. 1he
biographical and critical literature on lanon is almost entirely deoted to the lrench inluences on
Martinican society, inluences that are clearly patriarchal. lanon himsel reminds us that the
patriarchal Luropean amily with its law, its ailures, its ices, closely linked to the society that we
know, produces about 30 per cent neurotics`,Pv 39 , 48,. \hat many Martinicans, and other
Caribbean peoples, try desperately to shed, howeer, is their Arican lineage, a lineage whose
retentions structure property, or instance, matrilineally. 1he result, oten, is that the household, and
een home ownership, tends to be emale-centered. I the colonial alues weren`t imposed as real`
alues oer the Arican and ,in other regions, indigenous ones, this situation would simply be one o
liing two sets o alues. A matrilineal household would not be a deect.` But in culturally mixed
communities that cevter patriarchal alues, the result is catastrophic. lanon`s ather was a custom
oicial who was at times employed and at other times working through the amily shop, but lanon
elt, as no doubt many sons elt, that their athers held no power against white men, howeer ew in
number those white men were. lanon shows eidence o haing despised his ather because he elt
that his ather wasn`t a man, and the result was that lanon himsel was eer on guard or masculine
demotion. 1here is a amous ootnote, to which we will later turn, where he denies the existence o
the Oedipus Complex in Martinique. le was both right and wrong. le was right in the sense that a
structural \hite Man hoered oer black male reality. But he was wrong in his own existential
situation, or he longed or the replacement o his own ather. 1his longing emerged in a world
where the manhood o colored males is always called into question. In such a society, a male o
color is manly the extent to which he is useul, but with an economy that renders him little more,
but oten less, useul than the emale inhabitants to a colonizing orce that inantilizes and exploits
them both, such gender questioning is incessant. It has been the case eerywhere where there is
racism. In the end, then, lanon was not misogynist nor homophobic ,as we will later see,, but
instead was a man who hated the role laid out or him as a black male. I the black male was not a
man, and he was a black male, then he, too, was not a man. le desperately wanted to be a man.
Capcia desperately wanted to be something more than a woman. She wanted to be white.
She already /ver that she was a woman, but as a woman o color, she was locked on a scale o desire
that sought, aboe all, something she lacked. She did not only desire whiteness, but she desired to
be desired, and since she considered whiteness to be most desirable, that is what she most desired.
Both lanon and Capcia represented a ailure, but his ailure will maniest itsel throughout the
work. lis goal in chapters 2 and 3, in particular, is to explore ailure o a special kind, ailure that
emerges rom the retreat rom the public sphere o language to the supposed priate sphere o
sexual intimacy. 1o understand lanon`s analysis o such a retreat, we need, at irst, to understand
the Lacanian dimensions o his argument.
Jacques Lacan, the amed semiotic psychoanalyst, presented seeral important discussions o
the impact o language on our understanding o the Oedipus Complex.
13
lor Lacan, the lather
became symbolic, which made the order o legitimacy that lowed rom the lather also part o a
symbolic order. \oman thus has a problematic existence in the symbolic order, or the order is
patriarchal, positioned by the ather. Power is here phallic, and woman diers, so to speak, rom
that order. As in classical psychoanalysis, where woman is conditioned by castration anxiety ,the
absence` o a penis,, in Lacanian psychoanalysis she is lack or dierence or, i we will, ailure.
\illy Apollon, the amed laitian Lacanian psychoanalyst, has obsered that such a situation led to a
recurring theme o desire in his psychotic emale patients, the desire or a certain type o loe. \hat
they desired, he argued, was a certain quality o loe-more precisely, words o loe, certain words
addressed to them as subject.`
14
1hese words, as it turned out, could only be supplied by their
ather or someone who unctioned as such. Let us call these words o loe.` Loe oers
recognition that is also legitimating. \hen one is loed, one receies judgment rom another
regarding one`s existence. 1he loer bestows a judgment to the world, that the beloed should exist.
1hat is why the loer inds the thought o the beloed`s death unbearable, and it is why, as
Kierkegaard has obsered, loe also continues or loed-ones who hae passed away, the loe is
transormed to the judgment that the deceased other ovgbt still to exist. Loers see` their beloed
dierently than do others. 1he loer celebrates the perections and imperections o the beloed,
eatures that may otherwise seem unattractie take on the eneer o wonder, the beloed`s
uniqueness is eriied by such eatures and conirms the beloed`s irreplaceability. In lanon`s
words, 1he person I loe will strengthen me by endorsing my assumption o my irility, while the
need to earn the admiration or the loe o others will erect a alue-making superstructure on my
whole ision o the world. . . |,| authentic loe-wishing or others what one postulates or onesel,
when the postulation unites the permanent alues o human reality-entails the mobilization o
psychic dries basically reed o unconscious conlicts` ,Pv 33 , 41,.
lanon`s treatment o the impact o alienated loe on women o color presages 1oni
Morrison`s obseration in 1be tve.t ,e: 1he best hiding place was loe. 1hus the conersion
rom pristine sadism to abricated hatred, to raudulent loe. It was a small step to Shirley 1emple.
I learned much later to worship her, just as I learned to delight in cleanliness, knowing, een as I
learned, that the change was adjustment without improement.`
15
\hat is the impact o antiblack
racism on loe, where one seeks in the eyes o one`s loer and rom the words that low rom one`s
loer`s mouth a orm o justiication o one`s existence lanon and Morrison demonstrate a special
ailure here, a ailure to escape the social reality principle o antiblackness through a loing
whiteness. lanon`s position is not that interracial relationships must be pathological eorts to
escape blackness. lis argument is that where whiteness is the basis o the liaison, the eort is
pathological and hence a orm o ailure.
lanon`s decision to analyze ]e .vi. Martiviqvai.e and Sadji`s îvi is based on two criteria: the
popularity o the irst work and the insights both works bring into the subordinated relations o
black women and mulattas in an antiblack society. lere is how lanon introduces ]e .vi.
Martiviqvai.e:

lor ater all we hae a right to be perturbed when we read, in ]e .vi. Martiviqvai.e: I should
hae liked to be married, but to a white man. But a woman o color is neer altogether
respectable in a white man`s eyes. Len when he loes her. I knew that.` 1his passage,
which seres in a way as the conclusion o a ast delusion, prods one`s brain. One day a
woman named Mayotte Capcia, obeying a motiation whose elements are diicult to detect,
sat down to write 202 pages-her lie-in which the most ridiculous ideas prolierated at
random. 1he enthusiastic reception that greeted this book in certain circles orces us to
analyze it. lor me, all circumlocution is impossible: ]e .vi. Martiviqvai.e is cut-rate
merchandise, a sermon in praise o corruption ,Pv 34 , 42,.

1. Denean Sharpley-\hiting proides inormation on the enthusiastic reception that greeted this
book in certain circles.` She writes on p. 36 o her study:

In 1949, Mayotte Capcia would become the ourth Antillean and the irst black
woman to be awarded the renowned Crava Pri itteraire ae. .vtitte. or ]e .vi.
vartiviqvai.e ,1948,. 1he annual award, paying the handsome sum o 20,000 rancs,
was established in 1946 in Paris or noels, historical noels, essays, and poetry.
Interestingly, the jury who ound Capcia`s work worthy o recognition was
composed o thirteen lrenchmen. 1he autobiographical noel was hardly seen as a
cbef aòevrre among the writers o the vegritvae moement, nor did it eer gloss the
pages resered or literary criticism and book reiews in Pre.evce .fricaive. And the
authenticity, i.e., Capcia`s authorship, o the book has recently come under scrutiny.
Notwithstanding Maryse Cond`s bibliography o lrancophone Antillean women
writers in arote. ae fevve., Capcia`s work is not mentioned in Patrick Chamoiseau`s
and Raphal Coniant`s historical-literary tour de orce on writings by Antilleans,
ettre. creote.: 1racee. avtittai.e. et covtivevtate. ae ta titteratvre 1:-1:. One could
certainly argue that the marginalization o black women writers by black male literati
is not surprising and een that it is indicatie o persistent attempts to priilege male
oices and silence women`s candid articulation o their experiences. loweer, such
a statement would be in haste, or the monthly 1940s-50s issues o Pre.evce .fricaive
include scores o writings by black and white women, and ettre. creote. does in act
hae a cadre o Antillean women writers, including Maryse Cond, Simone Schwarz-
Bart, and Suzanne Csaire.

1he popularity o the work, then, oered insight into what an inluential group o white lrench men
wanted to read, which proides insight into the white construction` o lanon`s study ,c. Pv 6 ,
8,. But more, een with the realities o a market dictated by a white lrench reading public, there is
room or understanding o the portrayal o pathological blackness presented as black normatiity.
In short, Capcia`s autobiographical noel proides insight into social orces that are at work in the
lies o colonized people o the Caribbean. Valorization o whiteness is well known in all o the
Caribbean. In lanon`s time-and arguably today, as well-there were two principles at work in the
lie o the people o these islands, where the demographics were typically similar to Martinique`s, o
a small white population rom Lurope, a small population o local` whites, a population o brown
people ,usually mulattoes and, in the Anglophone Caribbean, Last Indians,, and the majority black
population. Capcia characterized these populations as lrance`s whiteys,` Martinican whiteys,`
mulattoes,` and niggers.` ,In Jamaica, an Anglophone island, one hears o whites,` white
neeygas` |white niggers`|, browns` and coolies,` and blacks` and neeygas.`, 1he seriousness
o these categories and the extend o the disdain or blacks and haing black ancestry were, and in
many instances continue to be, such that in, or instance, the Dominican Republic, legislation was
implemented to aectare Dominicans as a population o white and Indigenous American mixtures, in
spite o the genocide implemented by the Spanish Conquistadors against the indigenous peoples
there since Columbus`s time. In eect, the Dominican claim is that there are no vvtatto. in the
Dominican Republic. Mvtatto, we should bear in mind, is rom the Latin word vvtv., which means
mule,` and it reers to any mixture between whites ,horses, and negroes` ,donkeys,. 1he mule
reerence illustrates the orm o sel-deception that permeates antiblack societies: such racial
mixtures supposedly produce sterile ospring. One could imagine the social ontological orces
threatened by a ertile mulatto,` who is supposedly a contradiction o terms. Some communities
attempt to resole the contradiction through pure white identiication. In Puerto Rico, or instance,
there are many poems with the ri, \ou say you`re white, then show me your grandmother,`
which alludes to a history o inusion o whiteness in the black population that both contradict
claims o ,white, purity and placed a reminder o them oten alling short o romance. An insight o
the Puerto Rican adage is its absence o symmetry, one does not ask, in other words, or the racial
snob to produce her or his black grandather.` Implicit is the social conention that many
mulattoes ace concealing not only the existence o a black recent black ancestor but also that the
union with the white ancestor was oten without the conentional blessing o wedlock. 1he number
o white women who had their relationships with black men concealed by the morphological
whiteness o their osprings during those times also substantiate the point since they, unlike many
o their black emale counterparts, had reasons to authenticate their child`s whiteness with a claim
or vrit, instead o vitvre.
Capcia, lanon obseres, could not describe her loer`s beauty beyond the act that he was
blond, had blue eyes, and was white. le points out that her childhood bears witness to a woman o
action. In her early years, she attempted to blacken` the world by throwing ink oer lighter-
skinned children and whites who insulted her. Learning the limitations o her eorts, she switched
to whiten it, to launder it, to clean` it. She became a laundress. But that was not suicient, and
inspite o the success o her laundering business, whiteness could not be achieed without white
recognition. ler white loer, Andr, was a white oicer who aorded such a git. Capcia submits
to him totally. In lanon`s legelian reading-where a Lord-Bondsman relationship emerges in
struggles or recognition-Andr is her lord. She asks nothing, demands nothing, except a bit o
whiteness in her lie`,Pv 34 , 42,. She supports him, and at one moment coninces him to take
her to an upper-class social o whites, where she is humiliated by the behaior o the white women
there: 1he women,` she writes, kept watching me with a condescension that I ound unbearable.
I elt that I was wearing too much makeup, that I was not properly dressed, that I was not doing
Andr credit, perhaps simply because o the color o my skin-in short, I spent so miserable an
eening that I decided I would neer again ask Andr to take me with him`,Pv 35 , 43, Capcia
1948: 150,. \hy did Capcia ind all the aults in ber \hy didn`t she simply admit that those white
women were a group o cruel racists or that Andr was spineless In her reerences to blacks, she
spared no inectie, especially in her subsequent a vegre..e btavcbe, where black men are typically
reerred to as niggers` and black women as nigger whores` and sluts.` 1he answer is simple.
\hites can do no wrong. 1hey are gods. lanon obseres her outrage at the ilm Creev Pa.tvre.,
which has God and the angels played by black actors. Protests Capcia: low is it possible to
imagine God with Negro characteristics 1his is not my ision o paradise. But, ater all, it was just
an American ilm`,Pv 41 , 51, Capcia 1948: 65,. Capcia`s theodicy requires a white God.
At one point, Capcia is delighted to discoer that her maternal grandmother was white.
lanon`s response, in stream with what is said in Puerto Rico, is that

Since he is the master and more simply the male, the white man can allow himsel
the luxury o sleeping with many women. 1his is true in eery country and especially
in colonies. But when a white woman accepts a black man there is automatically a
romantic aspect. It is a giing, not a seizing. In the colonies, in act, een though
there is little marriage or actual sustained cohabitation between whites and blacks, the
number o hybrids is amazing. 1his is because the white men oten sleep with their
black serants ,Pv 3 , 46 n5,.

Ater quoting in the same note Manoni`s representation o lrench soldiers` liaisons with young
Malagasy women as ree o racial conlict, lanon adds:

Let us not exaggerate. \hen a soldier o the conquering army went to bed with a
young Malagasy girl, there was undoubtedly no tendency on his part to respect her
entity as another person. 1he racial conlicts did not come later, they coexisted. 1he
act that Algerian colonists go to bed with their ourteen-year-old housemaids in no
way demonstrates a lack o racial conlicts in Algeria. No, the problem is more
complicated. And Mayotte Capcia is right: It is an honor to be the daughter o a
white woman. 1hat proes that one was not made in the bushes.` ,1his expression
is applied exclusiely to all the illegitimate children o the upper class in Martinique,
they are known to be extremely numerous: Aubery, or example, is supposed to hae
athered almost ity.,

lanon`s remarks hardly represent hatred o women o color nor a ailure to understand their
situation. le is addressing a reality that permeates eery racist society. low was it, or example,
that so many mulattoes emerged during slaery and in post-bellum nineteenth-century America
when there were laws against miscegenation One need simply look at Angela \. Dais`s classic
study, !ovev, Race, ava Cta.., to ind answers to such questions.
16

Black-hating blacks and mulattoes oten regard whiteness by itsel as a good, but eidence o
oluntary gits o whiteness is a bonus. In Abdoulaye Sadji`s îvi,vvttre..e av evegat, there is an
educated black male accountant, Mactar, who pursues a mulatta stenographer, Nini. O Mactar,
lanon writes, One must apologize or daring to oer black loe to a white soul. . . . Just as Mayotte
Capcia tolerates anything rom her lord, Andr, Mactar makes himsel the slae o Nini, the
mulatto`,Pv 44-45 , 56,. Mactar is rebuked to the point o the mulatto community attempting
to sick the police on him. In the story, a white man eentually oers his hand in marriage to a
mulatta, which occasions a celebration o hope among the mulatto community and a new leel o
degradation: Mulattas who were engaged to mulattoes were now rebuked or ailing to achiee a
higher possibility.
\here does all this lead 1here are two principles that emerge in an antiblack society. 1hey
are be white!` and aoid blackness!` Capcia and Nini represent these edicts thus: . . . there are
two such women: the Negress and the mulatta |vvttre..e|. 1he irst has only one possibility and one
concern: to turn white. 1he second wants not only to turn white but also to aoid slipping back`,Pv
44 , 54,. 1hese two principles structure the ailure o these women`s eorts to escape. lor the
white loer`s desire to sere as a transormation o their blackness, it must be either a loe born
rom their loe or blackness or their hating blackness but ailing to see it in the beloed. 1he irst
has to be rejected because such loe would dealue the loer`s aections in the antiblack black`s
eyes, or the aim o the pathology was to eradicate blackness. 1his rejection eliminates a tbira
possibility, that the white loer both loes blackness ava happens to loe the beloed, or the loer`s
loing blackness would ruin the conjunction. So we go to the second. 1here, the problem is that a
white loer who hates blacks but is in loe with a black through denying the blackness o the
beloed is lost in a game o sel-deception or bad aith. 1he sel-deception is twoold: Both the
white loer and the black beloed would be in bad aith. 1he white loer`s sel-deception would be
one about his beloed`s blackness. But the black beloed`s is another matter. 1here, the deception
emerges rom the meaning o what the white loer oers her. In this case, recalling \illy Apollon`s
obseration o words o loe, it will be words o whiteness.` \e ind ourseles here on the plane
o narcissism, a phenomenon to which lanon reers throughout the text. lanon writes o many
eorts by blacks to be seen` in a special way, to be seen as a white. On narcissism, Jean
Baudrillard has argued that the narcissist seeks a deluding sel-image in the eyes o others and is thus
seduced by the deception. le writes,

`tt be ,ovr virror` does not signiy I`ll be your relection` but I`ll be your
deception.`. . . 1o .eavce i. to aie a. reatit, ava recov.titvte ove.etf a. ittv.iov. . . . Narcissus
too loses himsel in his own illusory image, that is why he turns rom his truth, and
by his example turns others rom their truth.
1

Similarly, leinz Kohut has identiied a orm o rage that he calls narcissistic rage.` Narcissistic
rage maniests itsel as hatred toward limitations on one`s desire to lie without limitations.
18
1he
enraged narcissist desires to be beautiul without limitation, which amounts to being the most
beautiul, intelligent without limitation, which amounts to being the most intelligent, and so on, to
the point o becoming, in a word, godlike. In stream with Baudrillard`s depiction, narcissistic rage
inites seduction because no human being is god or godlike, which means the desire o such rage
requires a lie to the sel. 1he demand o narcissism is or others to be the narcissist`s mirror, to
oer the narcissist a desired image, an image o the world as the narcissist would like it to be. Veiled
by I will be your mirror` is the truth: I will be your lie.` Perhaps the quintessential modern
allegory o narcissism is the eort o the stepmother in Snow \hite.` 1he stepmother looks into
the mirror and orders it to tell her what she knows deep down is not true and cannot be maintained.
Len i one were once the most beautiul woman in the land, it deies reality always to remain so.
One could be so, i and only i, one is the last woman in the land, and een there the criteria or
beauty would become ague, i not absurd. 1he mirror`s answer to her query is, howeer, simple
and imposes an objectie limit on her lie: Snow \hite. 1he elimination o Snow \hite, whose
name signiies both white irtue and the coldness ,snow, o truth ,white,, becomes a necessary
condition or the preseration o her lie. 1hus, the mirror is, in the end, not the lie, but instead her
projected mirror becomes her narcissistic antasy.
lanon`s discussion o the eort to escape on the leel o intimacy portrays a tale o
narcissism. Narcissism is the theme o some o his examples along the way:

I was talking only recently to one such woman |who deplored black men|. Breathless
with anger, she stormed at me, I Csaire makes so much display about accepting
his race, it is because he really eels it as a curse. Do the whites boast like that about
theirs Lery one o us has a white potential, but some try to ignore it and other
simply reerse it. As ar as I am concerned, I wouldn`t marry a Negro or anything
in the world.` Such attitudes are not rare, and I must coness that they disturb me,
or in a ew years this young woman will hae inished her examinations and gone
o to teach in some school in the Antilles. It is not hard to guess what will come o
that ,Pv 38 , 48,.

No doubt lanon was added to Csaire on such women`s lists. \e will see, howeer, that this
woman`s assessment o Csaire is not without some alidity, or would not alorization o blackness
also be a orm o narcissistic rage \hat lanon has in mind, howeer, is brought out urther by
another example: I knew another black girl who kept a list o Parisian dance-halls where-there-was-
no-chance-o-running-into-niggers``,Pv 40 , 50,. One could imagine what such a woman
expected to see in those dance halls. \e could imagine what it would take or her to be in a room
with no niggers.` It would, indeed, hae to be a room with no mirrors sae the eyes o the white
patrons. 1hose eyes, should they behae without irritation, should they behae as though things
were normal,` would airm that black woman`s sel-deception: It would seem as though there were
vo blacks in the dance hall, and since she would be among the patrons, then she would be among the
no-blacks-in-the-dance-hall. 1his is what Capcia sought when she demanded Andr to take her to
a white social. \hat he oered her was the sel-deceiing words o whiteness, words that only
whites could oer her. 1he situation is a ailure because loe is what should appear on the personal
terrain, .vare, not his whiteness, should hae oered her existence something. Andr, howeer,
doesn`t seem to hae desered een her near-white kind o loe, or the story ends with his playing a
ery typical role o the white lrench military toward black emale loe by abandoning her with their
child, and she is ironically thankul or the bit o whiteness let in her. Loe, in this liaison, was
unattainable because o the imposition o whiteness, no loe words, only white ones remained.
Although lanon ormally examines the ailure o the man o color in the succeeding chapter,
he hints at it early on in his discussion o Mactar and Nini. Mactar was also a Capcia, but he was so
in relation to a mulatta. I Mactar, or any black vav, or that matter lies as a vav in the Lacanian
ramework o alue-endowing words, then the issue would hae been what he brought to Nini, not
what Nini brought to him. lis words o loe should hae been enough. But since he is also
Capcia, then he sought something rom Nini, her words, that disrupts the order o patriarchal
bourgeois Luropean society. lanon returns to this theme in his ormal discussion o the man o
color, where the ocus is Jean Veneuse, the protagonist o Ren Maran`s autobiographical noel, |v
bovve areit av avtre. ,. Mav i/e Otber.,, whom he describes as a lamb to be slaughtered.`
19

Veneuse,Maran was an orphan rom the Antilles who grew up in lrench boarding schools. In his
adult years, he is a bookworm, an introert,` a so-called Good Negro,` the kind o negro that a
lot o white guys ought to be like`,Pv 53 , 65 ,Maran: 19,. \hen a white girl lirts with him, he
replies: Courage is a ine thing, but you`re going to get yoursel talked about i you go on attracting
attention this way. A Negro Shameul-it`s beneath contempt. Associating with anybody o that
race is just utterly disgracing yoursel`,Pv 53 , 66, Maran: 46,. Notice Veneuse,Maran`s
language o distance ,that race`,. 1he story takes a decisie turn when Andre Marielle, a white
woman, emerges as a loe interest. She loes Veneuse,Maran and he loes her. But
Veneuese,Maran tells her that their relationship cannot be.
Now, i Veneuse,Maran were white, a standard analysis o the situation would be that he is
an abandonment neurotic. Orphaned in his youth, an introert in his adult lie, he is araid o
abandonment so he abandons others to aoid such an experience himsel. 1hat he is black and that
Marielle is white brings a dimension to loe and abandonment that draws Veneuse,Maran closer to
Capcia than he and Mactar should hae been. Marielle writes him a letter declaring her loe or
him. She has, literally, gien her words o loe, words that, gien the antiblack racial dimensions o
the context, should hae unctioned as well as words o whiteness. But Jean Veneuse needs
authorization,` argues lanon. It is essential that some white man say to him, 1ake my sister``,Pv
55 , 68,. le consults a white male riend, M. Coulanges, who replies with the much-sought
words o whiteness:

In act you are like us-you are us.` \our thoughts are ours. \ou behae as we
behae, as we would behae. \ou think o yoursel-others think o you-as a
Negro Utterly mistaken! \ou merely look like one. As or eerything else, you
think as a Luropean. And so it is natural that you loe as a Luropean. Since
Luropean men loe only Luropean women, you can hardly marry anyone but a
woman o the country where you hae always lied, a woman o our good old
lrance, your real and only country. . . . As soon as you are back in lrance, rush to
the ather o the girl who already belongs to you in spirit and strike your ist saagely
on your heart as you shout at him: I loe her. She loes me. \e loe each other.
She must marry me. Otherwise I will kill mysel here and now ,Pv 55-56 , 68-69
,Maran: 152-154,.

And there we hae it: An alienated black man who has joined alienated black women in search o
words o whiteness rom the same source-the white man-words that airm them as most
desirable, as desired desire, as, in similar kind, Snow \hite`s stepmother`s mirror was prodded to
airm or her. \et in both classical and Lacanian psychoanlyses, there is a distinction between what
a woman wants and what a man wants. 1he unhealthy` dimension raised by race is that the
distinction disintegrates. 1he black antiblack woman and the black antiblack man collapse into the
same. 1heir desires mark the limitations on their light in the world o intimacy. laing whitened
that world with words o whiteness, they hae thrown to the wayside the project o loe. lanon`s
concluding assessment o |v bovve areit av avtre.

|v bovve areit av avtre. is a sham |ivo.tvre|, an attempt to make the relationship
between two races dependent on an organic unhealthiness. 1here can be no
argument: In the domain o psychoanalysis as in that o philosophy, the organic, or
constitutional, is a myth only or him who can go beyond it. I rom a heuristic
point o iew one must totally deny the existence o the organic, the act remains,
and we can do nothing about it, that some indiiduals make eery eort to it into
pre-established categories ,Pv 64 , 80,.

<,3$!)&(6'!:-!'&#-!=*$,!0(),!1(6#-%3:6-!)&#0$*$($*&#0>

lanon`s reerence to constitutionality announces the quarry o chapter our, Dominique Mannoni`s
constitutional rationalization o a supposed colonial complex among colonized people as presented
in his Pro.ero ava Catibav: 1be P.,cbotog, of Cotoviatiov.
20
le has already identiied an apologist`s
tendency in Mannoni`s work when Mannoni attempted to treat white lrench soldiers` access to
young Malagasy girls as a situation without racial conlict. Mannoni`s error is that he is persistent.
le argues, or instance, that the Malagasy had a colonizing complex, that their culture had, at its
normatie core, a pre-conquest coniction o their ineriority. Mannoni goes urther to compare
lrench society with other Luropean nations and concludes that since the lrench were supposedly
the least racist o the lot, then the racism and colonialism that emerged in Madagascar were
unctions o complexes that were already there. In response, lanon adances his amous dictum
that either a society is racist or it is not. It is because lrench society is racist that it conquered,
colonized, and imposed its racist structure on the Malagasy. Mannoni`s rationalization iolates Du
Bois`s admonition against problematizing people, it is tantamount to claiming that the appearance
o aricose eins in a patient does not arise out o his being compelled to spend ten hours a day on
his eet, but rather out o the constitutional weakness o his ein walls, his working conditions are
only a complicating actor. And the insurance compensation expert to whom the case is submitted
will ind the responsibility o the employer extremely limited`,Pv 69 , 85,. Ater chronicling
Mannoni`s arious rationalizations, he concludes that Mannoni, and all constitutionalist theorists o
colonization, simply miss the point: All orms o exploitation are orms o dehumanization. 1he
basic problem is to restore the humanity o each denigrated person. Mannoni compares orms o
colonialism without ultimately bringing colonialism itsel on trial. lis project is, in other words, a
theodicy o colonialism, it is an eort to ree the system rom critique by blaming the people it
dominates.
At this point, lanon`s argument takes an interesting turn. Although psychoanalysis was
earlier adanced as the analysis o ailure, a dimension o psychoanalysis is rendered untenable in the
colonial and racist context: 1he releance o classical psychoanalytic semiotics in a colonial setting.
lere, the symbolic is not psychoanalytical but cotoviat. Instead o black bulls and riles that appear in
the nightmares o Malagasy children representing the phallus o classical, or een Lacanian,
psychoanalysis, they stand, instead, as signiiers o reat encounters with colonial iolence. 1hey are
the images o the black Senegalese soldiers used to maintain the colonial order in Madagascar. 1his
ailure o the classically symbolic closes three stages o ailure-ailure o the public, ailure o the
priate, and ailure o the ontogenically priate ,the constitution o the organism or indiidual,. O
importance here, as well, is that schemes o rational explanation are inding their limits. In each
instance, the black attempts to address a problem and encounters himsel or hersel as the problem.
So lanon goes to a deeper leel o interiority or inward existence: lis own experience a. tirea.

8?,-!@*1-'!AB.-%*-#)-!&5!$,-!C63)D;
21

lanon begins the ith chapter by recounting a little white boy`s use o language-publicity-to
enmesh lanon in the realm o pure exteriority, the realm o the epidermal schema. 1he experience
occurred while he was completing his studies at Lyon: Dirty vegre!` or simply, Look, a vegre!` 1he
word vegre is ambiguous. It means both Negro` and nigger.` ,So much o lanon`s discussion
rom this point onward hinges on the ambiguity o this word that I shall use the term or the rest o
this discussion.,
1he orce o language, through the mouth o a child, roze lanon in his tracks. le ound
himsel dried up and laid out in a world o ice-cold exteriority. 1here, lanon realized his situation
as a two-dimensional object as in Luclidean geometry: le was out there` without an inside. 1his
passage is perhaps the most inluential part o the work. Its impact on post-1950s` treatments o
oppression is perhaps equaled only by Ralph Lllison`s prologue to his vri.ibte Mav, a text with which
it is oten discussed in the critical literature.
22
Among the many ironic elements o the passage is its
autobiographical status. Its report is paradoxical. lanon announces the experience o a world that
denies his inner lie, he examines the supposed absence o his inner lie frov tbe oivt of rier of bi. ivver
tife. 1he paradox o black experience is, thus, raised: Black eerievce should not exist since blacks
should not hae a point o iew. On the other hand, black experience is all that should exist since a
black`s subjectie lie should not be able to transcend itsel to the leel o the intersubjectie or the
social. 1he prejudice is amiliar: Blacks lie, at best, on the leel o the particular, not the uniersal.
1hus, black experience suers rom a ailure to bridge the gap between subjectie lie and the world.
It is an experience that is, literally, not experience. lanon describes this troubled experience at the
outset:

I arried in the world anxious to make sense o things, my spirit illed with desire to
be at the origin o the world, and here I discoered mysel an object amongst other
objects.
Imprisoned in this oerwhelming objectiity, I implored others. 1heir liberating
regard, running oer my body that suddenly becomes smooth, returns to me a
lightness that I belieed lost, and, absenting me rom the world, returns me to the
world. But there, just at the opposite slope, I stumble, and the other, by gestures,
attitudes, looks, ixed me, in the sense that one ixes a chemical preparation with a
dye. I was urious. I demanded an explanation.... Nothing happened. I exploded.
Now, the tiny pieces are collected by another sel ,Pv 88 , 109,.

Calling to the social world, he inds himsel sealed in a world without reciprocity. le inds himsel
in a situation o epistemic closure. Lpistemic closure is a moment o presumably complete
knowledge o a phenomenon. Such presumed knowledge closes o eorts at urther inquiry. 1he
result is what we shall call errer.e avov,vit,. Anonymity literally means to be nameless.
Namelessness characterizes most generalizable eatures o the social world. It is usually
characterized by the indeinite article a.` One sees a student` or a passerby` or a police oicer`
or a man` or a woman.` In ordinary encounters, we admit limited knowledge o indiiduals who
may occupy these roles or social identities. 1he encounters become skewed, howeer, when we
presume complete knowledge by irtue o indiiduals who exempliy an identity. 1he schism
between identity and being is destroyed, and the result is a necessary being, an oerdetermined,
ontological` reality. 1o see someone this way is to close o possibilities. It takes the orm o the
command and the declaration instead o the interrogatie, one does not, in other words, ask
questions because one presumes that one already knows all there is that needs to be known. 1he
person seen in this way is neer spoken to, neer queried, but instead simply spoken about and, at
best, ordered with special words as, say, commands to a Paloian dog.

I am oerdetermined rom outside. I am not the slae o the idea` that others hae
o me but o my appearance. I moe slowly in the world, accustomed to aspiring no
longer to appear. I proceed by crawling. Already the white eyes, the only true eyes,
are dissecting me. I am fiea. laing prepared their microtome, they slice away
objectiely pieces o my reality. I am disclosed. I eel, I see, in those white eyes, that
it is not a new man who enters, but a new type o man, a new genus. \hy-a
Negro!,Pv 93 , 116,.

lanon uses therimorphic language, language suitable or describing animals, to highlight the
subhuman dimensions o his two-dimensional, epidermal being. le proceeds by crawling,`
signiying a deolution into an insect-like existence, his antennae pick up racist snippets here and
there:

I slip into corners, and my long antennae pick up the catch-phrases strewn oer the
surace o things-nigger underwear smells o nigger-nigger teeth are white-
nigger eet are big-the nigger`s barrel chest-I slip into corners, I remain silent, I
strie or anonymity, or inisibility. Look, I will accept the lot, as long as no one
notices me!

Lentually, he deoles to the point o an amoeba under a microscope. le experiences his
historicity as a alse history and his struggle with 1heory, with Reason, as a cat-and-mouse game.
Between Reason and listory, 1heory and Practice, there is eerievce, which in this case is the
realization o a situation that stimulates an existential struggle against sedimented, dehumanized
constructions:

I was responsible at the same time or my body, or my race, or my ancestors. I
subjected mysel to an objectie examination, I discoered my blackness, my ethnic
characteristics, and I was battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual
deiciency, etishism, racial deects, slae-ships, and aboe all else, aboe all: Y a bov
bavavia!`

1he Markman translation ended this passage with Sho` good eatin`` to signiy a breakast cereal.
Banania is a lrench breakast cereal consisting o banana lour, cocoa, and sugar. 1he product came
on the market in 191 with Bonhomme Banania, a Senegalese soldier happily consuming the cereal.
lis motto: Y a bov bavavia!` Y a bov is so-called Arican lrench` or Cè.t bov!` ,It`s good!`,
lanon has much to say on the use o smiling blacks or the promotion o products, the smile is the
git` o the happy slae. Oer the years, Bonhomme Banania`s human eatures gae way to simian
ones, to the point o a recent logo that resembles a smiling monkey wearing a ez. 1here is, as well,
the obious connection between blacks and apes through the mediating symbol o banana lour. It
is a black Arican-nay, a Senegalese!, the supposedly most saage` o the bunch-the marketing
campaign suggests, who could reatt, appreciate a quality banana lour cereal.
23
1he struggle here is no less than Promethean. It is an embodied struggle against orces that
are not readily identiiable, how could it be that the mere inocation o te vegre draws upon orces, as
i by magical incantation, and seizes him so Such seizure could be understood through an
exploration o the body, the aspect o lanon that was blown apart and reconstructed as an
oerdetermined thing.`
lanon at irst obseres that he wants to laugh but cavvot. It is not until he risks public harm
by insulting the boy`s mother, a white woman-Kiss the handsome vegre`s ass, Madame!`-that he
is able to laugh and then moe on to an engagement with assessing his situation, with, that is,
Reason: I would personally say that or a man whose only weapon is reason there is nothing more
neurotic than contact with unreason. I elt knie blades open within me. I resoled to deend
mysel. As a good tactician, I intended to rationalize the world and to show the white man that he
was mistaken`,Pv 95 , 118,. But, he soon discoers, Reason proes limited: . . . I had to change
my tune. 1hat ictory played cat and mouse, it made a ool o me. As the other said it, when I was
there, it |Reason| was not, when it was there, I was no longer`,Pv 96 , 119-120,. lanon cites
scientists or progressie organizations like the \orld lealth Organization presenting the same
racist hierarchies .cievtificatt,. Scientiic racism presented an antinomy in antiracist reason, an
antinomy similar to the erdicts he ound with philosophical resistance. 1he same could be said or
listory. Although blacks lie in history, it seemed as though blacks were inisible to it, blacks
seemed to be, as legel claimed, patently vot listorical. Against listory and Reason, lanon then
attempts oetic resistance, resistance on the leel o aect. 1he Shepard who will bring him to that
salation Senghorian and Csairian vegritvae.
1he encounter with vegritvae betrays an odd dimension o the narratie. lanon`s experience
with vegritvae predates the ounding moment o relection in the chapter. le was introduced to it
rom the age o seenteen, during his t,cee days in Martinique, through his teacher Aim Csaire, who
had coined the term and presented his ideas in his reiew a Rereve 1roiqve, in addition to his now
classic Cabier a`vv retovr av a,. vatat. lanon had in act adopted vegritvae to the point o, upon
returning rom ighting in \orld \ar II, working or Aim Csaire`s election to the mayorship o
lort-de-lrance under the Communist ticket. Although lanon no doubt encountered Senghor`s
writings and thought through Csaire`s teachings during his t,cee days, he couldn`t help being struck
by the Senghorian brand o vegritvae that took center stage in 1948, during his studies at Lyons.
Recall that Senghor had edited a olume o poetry, .vtbotogie ae ta vovrette oe.ie vegre et vatgacbe ae
tavgve fravai.e. 1he olume was marked not only by the uniqueness o its poetry, but also by the
oreword, Orph Noir` ,Black Orpheus`,, written by Jean-Paul Sartre, a classic to which we shall
shortly turn.
êgritvae grew out o an exchange between lrancophone blacks in Paris and American
blacks rom the U.S. in the heyday o the larlem Renaissance. According to D.A. Masolo,

During this time |1931-1932|, a Martinican group, led by Paulette ,or Andre,
Nardal ounded and published six issues o Rerve av Movae ,1be tac/ !orta Rerier,, a
bilingual reiew to which leading exponents o the black moement contributed
articles. In addition to the exchange o iews in the reiew, requent meetings also
took place between Aricans, Antilleans, and leading Aro-American intellectuals in
Paris.... 1hus the inluence o the larlem Renaissance upon the birth o negritude
was not only rom a distance, it was also direct, through personal contacts.
24

1he aim o vegritvae writers was to rehabilitate the image o the vegre through writing or expressing a
positie or airming blackness. 1he moement initially had two wings. 1here was a group o
radical Antillean students who organized the periodical egitive Defev.e, which appeared in 1932.
1he other wing,` writes Masolo, led by the Guyanese Lon Damas, the Martinican Csaire, and
the Senegalese Lopold Sdar Senghor, was much more a cultural moement than a political one ,at
least at the beginning,. \hile or the ounders o egitive Defev.e political reolution had to precede
cultural reolution, or Senghor and his riends politics was but one aspect o culture.`
25
Ater
\orld \ar II, vegritvae began to gain inluence among black lrancophone intellectuals-perhaps
because o similar sentiments as lanon`s ater haing ought in that war and witnessed an
airmation o the racial practices that preceded it-which led to Senghor`s radicalizing his position
o black and white dierence as a departure or his brand o vegritvae. 1he culmination o these
relections was the ollowing inamous dictum: èvotiov e.t vegre covve ta rai.ov betteve.` ,Lmotion
is black as reason is Greek.`,
26
\ith this Manichean dictum, the world ollows a lawless logic. One
could easily see its immediate attraction. lanon`s place` was announced. le was supposedly in a
cat-and-mouse game with Reason because it wasn`t his nature.` lis place was in the world o
emotion,` a world o aect,` o rhythm, song, and dance. lere, we ind seduction and
narcissism, themes o his discussion o intimacy in his second chapter, returning on a dierent leel
o inwardness. I whiteness represented the outer, the objectie, the realm o Reason, the black`s
realm will be the radically inner, the subjectie, the realm o Unreason. lanon cites Senghor`s Ce
que l`homme noir apporte` ,\hat the Black Man Brings`,, where his racial secretions,` his racial
essence,` is rb,tbv ,Pv 98 , 122,.
2
At last, he thinks, he has ound a terrain on which whites will
lose, the terrain o the irrational. le inokes Senghor`s poem, drawing upon a musical leitmoti
punctuated by onomatopoeia here and there, and the stereotypes o the jungle ersus the city, the
saage ersus the ciilized. As is expected in an analysis o ailure, his search or vegre greatness
encounters its impasse in an ironic moment o usion, namely, Sartre`s Orph Noir.`
êgritvae, Sartre argued, was akin to the reincarnation myth o Orpheus, the lyrical singer,
musician, and poet, who descends into the Underworld to rescue his beloed Luridyce but is told,
ater beguiling lades, that he could return to the surace world with her so long as he doesn`t look
back. Orpheus looks back, loses Luridyce, and is subsequently ripped to shreds by mad worshipers
o Bacchus, the god o wine, women, and tragedy. Sartre attempted to capture, poetically, the
descent` o the vegritvae poets-descent into blackness-which, he argued, maniested a orm o
antiracist racism. It was racist because it airmed black superiority. It was antiracist because it was a
rejection o white supremacy and antiblack racism. Sartre was here addressing an important
dialectical moe, that perhaps white supremacy could only be negated through playing out its
ineriority. Sartre pointed out, howeer, that what is gained rom this moe is a reolutionizing
awareness. lrom the negatie moment that vegritvae maniested-descent`-the vegre can then
ascend` to a uniersal, reolutionary consciousness, which, Sartre argued, was the uniersal`
struggle o the proletariat, in a word, Marxism.
lanon stumbled. le again had to change his tune. 1he Reality Principle, so to speak,
remained-through Sartre and the skewed iconography o Senghorian vegritvae-white.

\hen I read that passage |o uniersalism rom Orph Noir`| I elt that I had been
robbed o my last chance. I said to my riends, 1he generation o younger black
poets has just suered a blow that can neer be orgien.` lelp had been sought
rom a riend o the colored peoples, and that riend had ound no better response
than to point out the relatiity o what they were doing. lor once, that born
legelian had orgotten that consciousness has to lose itsel in the night o the
absolute, the only condition to attain to consciousness o the sel. In opposition to
rationalism, he summoned up the negatie side, but he orgot that this negatiity
draws its worth rom an almost substantie absoluteness. A consciousness
committed to experience is ignorant, has to be ignorant, o the essences and the
determinations o its being ,Pv 108 , 133-134,.

leeling robbed o his last chance, he simultaneously rebukes Sartre or a rationalist impulse that
iolated a needed, ironically Platonic lie. Relection was the death knell o the black, it was that rom
which he was attempting to escape. Sartre, he suggests, should hae encouraged his sel-delusion,
his narcissistic search or his desired mirror image, i but or the sake o instantiating Sartre`s
argument o maximizing the negatie moment o the antiracist, anticolonial struggle rom the
spirited chest o the vegre. It needed to be the vegre`s moment, his resistance, his upsurge:

My vegre consciousness does not hold itsel out as a lack. It i. its own ollower....
\hat is certain is that, at the ery moment when I was trying to grasp my own being,
Sartre, who remained 1he Other ... was reminding me that my vegritvae was only a
minor term. In all truth, in all truth I tell you, my shoulders slipped out o the
ramework o the world, my eet could no longer eel the touch o the ground.
\ithout a vegre path, without a vegre uture, it was impossible or me to lie my
vegreve... Not yet white, no longer all the more so black, I was damned. Jean-Paul
Sartre had orgotten that the vegre suers in his body quite dierently rom the white
,Pv 111-112 , 13-138,.

In spite o this dierent suering, o haing no where to all because o already haen allen, the
reality principle returned with dizzying orce. \hy couldn`t the symbolism articulate, at least, btac/
rea.ov \hy were Senghor`s symbolic hierarchy, in the end, an airmation o the white
constructions against which he has at this point spent twenty ie years ighting

... this vegre who is looking or the uniersal. le is looking or the uniersal! But in
June 1950, the hotels in Paris reused to rent rooms to vegre pilgrims. \hy Purely
and simply because their Anglo-Saxon customers ,who are rich and who, as eeryone
knows, hate vegre., threatened to moe out ,Pv 150 , 186,.

No, at this point, Sartre seemed unorgiable. \ith seeming nowhere to turn, lanon ends this
chapter, L`Lxprience cue du Noir,` without responsibility, straddling Nothingness and
Ininity,` by conessing that he began to weep.
1hat lanon concludes by conessing that he wept reeals the therapeutic dimension o the
chapter. Recall his reerence to laughter. Laughter enabled him to cope with his situation, to moe
on. 1he role o humor in oppressed communities is well known. 1here is not only the orm o
humor in which the oppressor is ridiculed, but there is also sel-deprecating humor, humor that
creates a paradoxical distance and closeness with their situation. A riend related to me a joke rom
a Jewish \orld \ar II concentration camp surior: A German oicer once yelled to a group o
inmates, ley-all o you-get rom behind that broomstick!` In many black communities, this
snap` or example o the dozens` appears: \our ather`s so black that when he alls down, people
hop oer rom ear o alling iv.` 1here was slae humor, Gypsy humor, Jewish humor-as we see,
een in concentration camps, arieties o immigrant humor, and there continues to be sel-
deprecating black humor. lumor stands in these communities as complex competitors o proerbs,
but instead o wisdom, they oer distance. lanon`s text is loaded with this orm o humor, he
sarcastically mocks the vegre`s tragicomic eorts in this theodicean struggle. But humor has its
limitations. It takes much to be able to laugh at onesel, and excess could lead to pathology. 1he
struggle or liberation, or humanization, is thus structurally similar to therapy. Patients may, or
instance, laugh at their situation while telling their story, but this laughter is to make them go on
although oten without genuine conrontation, it is a practice o seeming closeness that leads to
distance, the grin, the laugh, also means too close or comort.`
Breakthrough` in therapy oten occurs with tears, with catharsis. lanon wept because he
realized that eery eort to aoid the truth ailed. It was through such catharsis that he was then
able to ace the implications o his situation, iv rbaterer forv it va, be. 1hat is why the succeeding
chapter is entitled, 1he êgre and Psychopathology.` le is now able to ace the
psychopathological implications o his situation.

E&%43$*1*$2!3#'!$,-!.%&:6-4!&5!#&%436*$2!

1he irst thing lanon obseres is that black psychology is abnormal psychology. A normal black
child, haing grown up with a normal amily, will ind himsel abnormal |.àvorvati.era| rom the
slightest contact with the white world`,Pv 11 , 143,. \hereas there is a conception o normality
or whites-that is, their being human` by irtue o being white-there is no such thing or blacks.
An adult black who is well adjusted,` as we saw in our discussion o language, is an abnormal
black.` An adult black who is not well adjusted-in act, inantile-is a normal black,` which
ironically means an abnormal person` or simply abnormality.` 1o be abnormal or a black and
abnormal or a human being is to be in a Catch 22.` It is, as lanon obseres, like Rodin`s 1be
1biv/er with an erection-there`s a shocking image. One cannot decently hae a hard on`
eerywhere`,Pv 134 , 165,. In this chapter, as in chapter ie, all the motis o chapters one
through our are repeated but with more insight.
lanon cites an associational test he administered to 500 whites ,lrench, German, Lnglish,
Italian, oer a ie-year period. \hen he elt their guard was down, when they were sure they would
not oend` him, lanon inserted the word vegre.` lis obseration

êgre brought orth biology, penis, strong, athletic, potent, boxer, Joe Louis, Jesse Owens,
Senegalese troops, saage, animal, deil, sin.
evegate.e .otaier, used as the stimulus, eoked dreadul, bloody, tough, strong.
It is interesting to note that one in ity reacted to the word vegre` with âi or SS....
Let me add that some Luropeans helped me by giing the test to their acquaintances:
In such cases the proportion went up notably ,Pv 134-135 , 166,.

tac/ âi. 1he leel o inestment in blackness as eil was such that all eil, een eil that was
patently antiblack, was inested in the vegre. But lanon`s conclusion goes urther: 1he vegre
represents the biological danger`,Pv 134 , 165,. lear o the biological becomes ear o the vegre:
1he vegre symbolizes the biological`,Pv 135 , 16,. 1he biological is usually associated with the
genital and sex, the result o which is the collapse o the vegre to the genital: . . . one is no longer
aware o the vegre but only o a penis, the vegre is eclipsed. le is turned into a penis. le i. a
penis`,Pv 13 , 10,. lanon is responding to this passage rom Michel Cournot`s Martiviqve:

1he black man`s sword is a sword. \hen he has thrust it into your wie, she has
really elt something. It is a reelation. In the chasm that it has let, your little toy is
lost. Pump away until the room is awash with your sweat, you might as well just be
singing.... lour vegre. with their penises exposed would ill a cathedral. 1hey would
be unable to leae the building until their erections had subsided, and in such close
quarters that would not be a simple matter.
28

Notice that Cournot did not write o the vegre thrusting his phallus into the vegre`s vegre.. but into an
imagined white reader`s wie. \e`re on amiliar ground here, but the danger as expressed by
Cournot is not simply o the black male rapist but also o white emale desire. 1he subtext o
Cournot`s relection is that the vegre is what a white woman really` wants. lanon agrees, but with
the proision that she be a vegrephobic white woman. 1he vegre becomes, on the leel o antasy and
phobia, be rbo /vor., he who will do to her what, how, and as she imagines she would like to be
done.
29
1he absence o Cournot`s imagining the vegre..e does not inalidate the thesis that she, too, is
genital and biological. 1he missing text is that i the white man could no longer please his wie ater
she has been with a vegre, his dreams o .evatt, pleasing a vegre..e is hopeless. In the end, it is not the
power o his sword but the authoritatie orce o the color o his skin. 1he vegre pleases her because
her chasm` is so wide that it cannot een eel` the vegre`s sword, which makes sexual impact
irreleant or her. She i. agina, endlessly open, wide.
lanon has been rebuked by some eminist critics or announcing in this chapter that, as or
the woman o color, he knows nothing o her.`
30
Lerything we hae discussed since chapter two
o the text contradicts this. \hat lanon means is that he lacks ctivicat knowledge o the vegre in the
woman o color`s antasy lie. 1he reason or this is obious: racism and sexism are such that emale
mental patients o color would hae been taken at their peril to a predominantly white male
community o mental health workers. 1o this day, people o color preer to take mentally ill emale
relaties either to clergy counselors or to social workers because o the dangers o sexual iolence in
such situations. lanon, in short, had to rely on nonclinical inormation because o the
demographics o most mental health patients: white men, white women, and men o color.
I suspect, howeer, that we could easily proide a response rom both popular culture and in
clinical studies today. In terms o the ormer, there are irst-world women o color who, or
instance, isit places where there are supposedly real` men o color who sere pretty much the
same sexual role as the vegre or vegre-hungry white women. 1he acation in Arica or the Caribbean
come readily to mind. 1hat the subject` here is women o color should not obscure recognition o
this phenomenon, or on the leel o antasy and desire the terrain is amiliar: 1bo.e men o color
reatt, /vor how to treat a woman o color,` as we ind in the popularity o or tetta Cot er Croore
ac/ ,1998,, although the women o color in those other regions may beg to dier.
31
In terms o
clinical studies, I hae yet to come across a clinical study o neurotic nor psychotic black women`s
imagined conceptions o black men, although I suspect that the conclusion might be the same gien
that mental illness usually retreats to the most conentional-een stereotypical-conceptions o
normality.
I the vegre is both sex and \estern anxiety oer sex, then psychoanalysis and other \estern
human sciences ind their limitations here, or sex` here is not only structurally deiant,` but, by
irtue o its seriousness, also not symbolic. It is, as lanon declares, bobogeve ,bobogevic,-material,
existentially serious, real.
32
A phobogenic object is aviogeve ,aviogevic,-a stimulus to anxiety ,Pv
124 , 151,. Anxiety is a special mode o consciousness. Unlike ear, anxiety pertains to the sel.
One experiences anxiety when one suers oer what one should ao, the choices one either wishes to
make or aoid. In existential philosophy, especially those Kierkegaardian and Sartrean, it is a
struggle with sel, oer what one will be` by irtue o what one does or would like to do.
1he vegre, then, stimulates anxiety in the white man and the white woman. \e hae already
seen what he stimulates in the heterosexual white woman. In the heterosexual white man, one
might ollow Cournot`s sense o possessing an inadequate toy.` lanon goes urther, howeer, and
argues that or both the heterosexual white man and the heterosexual white woman, the vegre is a
putatie sex partner ,Pv 12 , 156,. In eect, or the white man, the vegre-phobic moment is,
then, a homophobic, i not homoerotic, one. It is a moment o repulsion and attraction. 1he
iolent history o vegre-phobia suggests, then, an eort to extricate-as Snow \hite`s stepmother
attempted to extricate the object o her limitation and desire-material homosexual desire rom the
world. 1he vegre-phobic white man hates, in other words, the act that he ae.ire. the vegre. But since
the world o the phobic is such that symbol and being collapse into one, the vegre i. homosexual
desire. 1he vegre must,` then, be destroyed. \e ind here, then, some o the most controersial
hypotheses and conessions in lanon`s oevrre:

Let me obsere at once that I had no opportunity to establish the orert presence o
homosexuality in Martinique. 1his must be iewed as the result o the absence o
the Oedipus complex in the Antilles. 1he schema o homosexuality is well enough
known. \e should not oerlook, howeer, the existence there o what are called
men dressed like women` or godmothers.` Generally, they wear shirts and skirts.
But I am coninced that they lead normal sex lies. 1hey can take a punch like any
he-man` and tbe, are vot iverriov. to tbe attvre. of rovev-ish and egetable
merchants. In Lurope, on the other hand, I hae known seeral Martinicans who
became homosexuals, always passie. But this was by no means a neurotic
homosexuality: lor them it was a means to a lielihood, as pimping is or others ,Pv
164 n44 , 180 n44, emphasis added,.

lanon here does not deny the existence o heterosexual transestites and perhaps bisexuals in
Martinique. lis claim that the Oedipus complex is absent in Martinique emerges rom his iew that
Martinican men do not hae Martinican fatber. to replace. Len in childhood, such identiication is
absent:

1he young black in the Antilles, who in school neer ceases to repeat, our
oreathers, the Gauls,` identiies his |or her| sel with the explorer, the ciilizer, the
white who brings truth to the saages-an all-white truth. 1here is identiication,
that is to say that the young black subjectiely adopts a white attitude. 1he hero,
who is white, is inested with all aggression ,Pv 120 , 14,.

1here is no black ather to mirror as 1he lather. Consequently, there is no struggle or the mother.
She is already theirs, her children`s. It is the \hite lather, the Colonizing lather, against whom
such a relation could be made maniest, but that ather is structural and rarely made lesh on the
leel o the personal. lanon here maintains his theme that the slightest contact with the white
world will produce an abnormal response, that is why he adds that there are Martinican males in
Paris who are marketable as passie` homosexuals. 1here, white male desire or conquest is
reenacted in such roles. ,Interestingly enough, Malcolm X recounts in his autobiography white
males who sought black males to play the role o sadists oer them, a phenomenon which lanon
speaks o as well., lor our purposes, what is important is that lanon speaks o neurotic
homosexuality,` which implies that there are orms o homosexuality that are neither neurotic nor
abnormal. A more problematic conession or lanon`s critics emerges, howeer, in the ollowing
passage:

I hae neer been able, without reulsion, to hear a man say o another man: le is
so sensual!` I do not know what the sensuality o a man is. Imagine a woman saying
o another woman: She`s so terribly desirable-she`s darling... `,Pv 163 , 201,.

lanon is responding to Michel Salomon`s racist ascination with the vegre ,which lanon cites on the
same page beore his remarks,: But to say that the mere act o his skin, o his hair, o that aura o
sensuality that he |the vegre| gies o does not spontaneously gie rise to a certain embarrassment,
whether o attraction or o reulsion, is to reject the acts in the name o a ridiculous prudery that
has neer soled anything. . . .` Salomon`s remarks are clearly homoerotic and they collapse the vegre
into an essentially sexed being ,the mere act o his skin`,. lanon`s response is twoold. lirst, he
is announcing his heterosexuality. le is also announcing that be doesn`t hae a hard on` all the
time, that he is not, in other words, by irtue o his skin, a permanent source o sexual heat-
especially around men. Salomon`s sexual ascination with the vegre makes the sensual moment a
projection, which leads to a ailure to read the absence o a desire to be in a homoerotic relation with
him. 1he racial codes thus displace the codes o sexual orientation. A homosexual who inds
another man sensual is normal.` \e could add to this normality the understanding that being
attracted to men does not entail being attracted to av, man, just as a heterosexual man, although not
reolted by the thought o sleeping with women, will not necessarily be attracted to erer, woman.
1he reeness with which Salomon spoke o this attraction suggests a normatie eature that makes
such an association sae.` Salomon can, in other words, hae a homoerotic attraction to the vegre
without worry o really` being a homosexual. A case in point: Popular ilms like 1be Cr,ivg Cave
,1992, and Pvt ictiov ,1995, could hae scenes o white males sodomizing black males and
maintain their appeal to predominantly homophobic audiences because o the accepted hierarchies
o masculine white aggressies and emasculated, i not always eminine, black passies. \e see
similar themes in presentations o relations between white males and Asian ,including Asian-
American, males.
33
I said earlier that lanon had or himsel a manhood project. It is a project
shared by all men whose manhood is called into question. It is a eature o heterosexuality that the
heterosexual does not desire members o his sex. 1hat lanon speaks o reulsion` should be
looked at as, say, a homosexual male who inds sleeping with a woman reolting, or a lesbian who
inds the thought o sleeping with a male reolting, conessions o which are in no short supply.
34

\e should, howeer, bear in mind that normatiity is such that a logic o symmetry oten proes
allacious. 1hus, in a society where heterosexuality is the norm, the sexual anxieties o a
heterosexual may project its own vegre-in a word, a heterosexual vegre`s vegre. lanon`s remark is
homophobic in this sense, but one wonders, ater that is said, what would count as a lack o
reulsion or homosexual contact short o engaging in homosexual relations with the male who
issues the charge o homophobia. \e hae, howeer, heard a ersion o that argument beore:
\ou must hate black men because you won`t sleep with me.` I recall a colleague who was oended
by a white woman who told her that she was homophobic because o her rebuing the woman`s
adance. 1he colleague, who was black, told me that she was oended because o the audacity o
her pursuer: \hat makes her think that een i I slept with women, I would want to sleep with ber!`
1he example o a woman`s anxieties raises, as well, the question o lanon`s presumption o a
parallel problem with women. lere, lanon missed the logic that inormed his analysis o Capcia
and Nini. \omen are, ater all, sexed in ways that trigger normatie acceptance o them as sites o
the sensual.` Cinema proides ample support or this thesis: 1he emale body can be exposed
without much threat o censorship. In pornography, heterosexual` ilms routinely hae so-called
lesbian` scenes without being gay` or bisexual.` 1hrow in a scene with two white males haing
sex, and the designation changes. And interracial all-male sex Much here depends on who is doing
what to whom.
lanon`s concerns were primarily regarding interracial sexual relations. lis discussions o
homosexual interracial relations raises the question o the relationship o structure to situation. 1hat
the black is already structured as the passie challenges the readings o dierence and the extent to
which the signs and symbols o psychoanalytical themes can accurately characterize the vegre`s
condition. 1he lanonian dictum, that social and cultural orces come into play, pushes their
ontological claims to the wayside. Such sciences o the human being work, he concludes, to the
extent that they remain blind to the existence o those who embody their limits. \hite normatiity
enables us to examine the projections o the vegre, but those projections permeate the social world
and render it as such that lesh-and-blood people o color suer a claustrophobic seal wheneer
they reach beyond their place.` Can, in other words, blacks and whites meet` Are dynamics o
such mutual recognition possible

C-6&=!$,-!0-65F&$,-%!'*36-)$*)

1he search or recognition, the ocus o the penultimate chapter, ollows the path o its
predecessors. It ails on two counts-Adlerian psychology and legelian dialectics o recognition.
1he Adlerian moe ails because o the superstructural orce o the \hite Man, under whom men o
color, as we hae seen in our discussion o lanon`s manhood project, ind equality only among
themseles betor the \hite. 1hat being so, one wonders whether the subordinated status o the
black could lead to a dynamic o recognition. lanon considers legel`s classic heuristic treatment o
the subject in his Pbevovevotog, of irit, which ormulates the matter in terms o a struggle or
recognition between an hypothesized Lord and an hypothesized Bondsman. legel argued that the
human being dierentiates himsel rom nature through his ability to do with it whateer he pleases.
\hen he encounters another human being, the project is limited by the other human being`s aiming
to do the same to him. A struggle ensues wherein, due to ear o death, one submits and, in
exchange or his lie, is orced to sere the ictor who now becomes, by irtue o such recognition,
his Lord. 1he serant or bondsman seres the Lord through working with nature, which brings
back the realization o his dierence rom nature and his ability to take care o himsel and the Lord.
1he Lord, on the other hand, becomes indolent and dependent on the bondsman, especially or his
recognition as a Lord. lanon does not address legel`s treatment in his Pbito.ob, of Rigbt, where the
realization o eliminating mastery or an age o equality, reedom, and mutual recognition emerges.
A promised age o mutual recognition born rom the miserable history o vegre enslaement lanon
doesn`t think so, because neither the legelian Master nor the Structural \hite Man wants
recognition rom the vegre, each wants ror/ and bodies, as we hae seen in the many eclipses o the
black, without points o iew.
35

lere, we see as well, why any theoretical articulation o the vegre`s condition on the basis o
Sel-Other relations ails. 1hey presuppose the subtle symmetry o Otherness.` \hite-black
relations are such that blacks struggle to achiee Otherness, it is a struggle to be in a position for tbe
etbicat to everge. 1hus, the circumstance is peculiarly wrought with realizations o the otiticat. lanon
ends tac/ /iv, !bite Ma./., then, politically and existentially. Politically, he imagines what
eentually became known as Martin Luther King, Jr.`s Beloed Community, where all join hands and
sing ree at last!` but through the ery dierent, tortuous route o a majestic, iolent struggle. 1he
message o the ailures, then, is systemic: 1he modern system o human dierence is such that it
does not by itsel hold the resources o human salation. 1hat the system itsel must be attacked is a
reolutionary call, it is the call to ight, to struggle against oppression, against, that is,
dehumanization. In that struggle, lanon calls or a pedagogy to build ,eaifier, to ediy,` to build`,,
through the tremors o beckoning bodies, a questioning humanity. In his words:

\as my reedom not gien to me then in order to build the world o the Yov
At the conclusion o this study, I want the world to recognize, with me, the open
door o eery consciousness.

My inal prayer:
O my body, make o me always a man who questions!

1he inal words here carry the irony o a call against inal words. lanon changes the direction o the
analysis to the second person ormal, to the unmediated Reader who can best be articulated as Yov.
In existential thought, this Yov is amiliar, it is the Yov o the unmediated world o Martin Buber,
where and Yov leae no room or it` ormulations.
36
\hen I speak to Yov, I am addressing you
in your humanity. Such recognition aces the open door o eery consciousness,` another human
being deoid o oerdetermined presumptions. Such a reaching out leads to a new embodiment.
lrom anger to apprehension to laughter to tears, lanon leaes us with a ra,er. And this prayer,
ironically, is not to an outside orce, to a god, but to the anxieties o the embodied sel. lis body is
called upon to release itsel rom the enmeshed web o social pathologies to the expression that best
suits a mature, ree consciousness-the embodiment o questioning.

G&4-!)&#)6('*#7!$,&(7,$0!

\hat did lanon achiee at the age o twenty six in tac/ /iv, !bite Ma./.
In those 188 pages ,in the lrench,, lanon made contributions in seeral areas o thought.
1he work challenges the iability o any single science o the study o human beings and presents a
radical critique premised upon the examination o human ailure. In classical psychoanalysis,
neurosis and psychosis emerge as aim-inhibited actiity rooted in subconscious and unconscious lie.
lailure there emerges as not achieing-or seeming incapable o achieing-one`s goals. But ailure
by itsel is not properly psychoanalytical. One could experience ailure without neurotic or
psychotic content. 1he psychoanalytical emerges through either one`s response to ailure or one`s
role in the constitution o ailure. It is where one is the source o one`s ailure that classical
psychoanalysis comes into play. Semiotic psychoanalysis moes to the leel o structural ailure, but
there it is on the leel o meaning. Instead o ailure, lack` or dierence` is the ocus. \hat one
lacks, or the social meaning o onesel as lack` or dierence,` proide clues into one`s ailure,
which in such a case is a lack o haing what one wants. But again, ailure is not necessarily
psychoanalytic here. One could as well experience ailure, which may symbolize lack,` but to ail
does not necessarily mean to be a source o ailure. Psychoanalysis is thus within the set o human
sciences that are limited by his critique, but it is so paradoxically because its ailure is as a philosophy
o ailure, that is, i it succeeds it ails, and i it ails, it, or at least lanon, succeeds.
1he paradoxes o a metatheory o ailure raises the ollowing question: \hat are the
conditions by which we are able, or instance, to analyze structural ailure 1he terrain there, as we
hae seen, is ormally theodicean. lanon`s point is that the black encounters his or hersel as the
source o ailure whereer ailure is encountered. le has thus, in eect, complicated the
psychoanalytical moment. In most psychoanalytical contexts, as we hae seen, it is .evat dierence
that is most basic. lanon has demonstrated a raciat eiaervat .cbeva that unctions in such a way as to
collapse sexual dierence, as we saw in his discussion o Capcia and Veneuse,Maran. 1he petit-
bourgeois roots o psychoanalysis thus inds, in lanon, its relatie dimension in the adancement o
a colonial schema, where the symbolic alls sway to the eer-encroaching materiality o the real.
lanon complicates the analysis o ailure, moreoer, by raising an existential critique o the symbolic
in an antiblack world. By pointing out the .eriov.ve.. o blackness, he has pointed out its materiality
in the world o negrophobia. In eect, there is not displacement or the symbolic there, which
makes blackness operate on the leel o reality, constantly, in such a world. So lanon introduced
the importance o experience and systemic resistance. In the end, one figbt. against racism and
colonialism, which is etervat airectea actiity instead o internal relection, his counsel is, in short,
actiovat.
tac/ /iv, !bite Ma./. is, thereore, like Dante`s vfervo, which ends ater a seemingly
endless journey o witnessing sinul practices o utility with a beautiul ascent that bears witness to
the stars, a patently optimistic text despite its moti o ailure.
3
1he perormatie contradiction o
pessimism is the work itsel. lanon ultimately criticizes the collapse o rationality into !e.terv or
!bite rationality. 1he text itsel-an eort to rea.ov with the reader-is a erdict against
irrationalism, although it is not a wholesale endorsement o rationalism. 1oo vvcb rationalism is,
ater all, irrational.
1he other areas in which this work has made contributions are remarkable. 1he analysis o
ailure is paradoxical. lanon examines not only ailure, but the ailure o ailure. lis work is, in
eect, akin to the Kierkegaardian notion o an existential paradox. An existential paradox is where
an achieement requires ailure, where a light rom anguish is anguish, or, as we ind in Sartre`s
eivg ava ôtbivgve.., where good aith is a orm o bad aith. lurther like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche,
and Sartre, lanon`s work also raises questions o rritivg. Lxistentialists write in ways that challenge
the orms o writing they at irst seem constrained by. tac/ /iv, !bite Ma./. is not written in a
way that can readily identiy what type o work it is. It speaks about psychology, but not in the
ormat o standard psychological works. It is replete with philosophical reerences, but not in the
orm o standard philosophical treatises. 1here are analyses o popular literary texts, and reerences
to seeral classical ones, but the other disciplines challenge a reading o the work as a purely literary
eort.
One could argue, as well, that it is a phenomenological work, but one would hae to add that
the existential imports would make it an existential phenomenological work, and one would hae to
add that it is phenomenological to the extent that it starts rom a radical rejection o presupposed
method, which, paradoxically, is it. method. 1his radical rejection has an impact on the role o
temporality in the text. Chester lontenot has commented that lanon`s insistence on the present,
in act, on a constant presence which is, in a sense, anti-historical, gies his writings an aesthetic
quality ... |lanon| constructs his myth in the present, and ocuses on the past only insoar as it gies
him a basis to moe rom the negatie zone, which is characterized by the metaphoric tendency
toward identiication with and assimilation into Luropean culture, to the positie zone, which is
characterized by the metonymic urge toward uniqueness and dierentiation.`
38
Phenomenologists
would immediately see these moements as examples o irrealization,` the phenomenological term
or the reality addressed by the phenomenologist ater suspension o some o his or her ontological
commitments or iews about the being o the world. 1he present` as used here is a present to
which we can return at any moment to continue our inquiry. It is the present o thought, o inquiry,
o relection. Note, as well, lontenot`s identiication o the aesthetic quality that emerges through
such an approach. Maurice Natanson has written on this aesthetic quality in his work on
phenomenology and literature, where he has argued that philosophical relection in literature is
phenomenological.
39
In spite o all this, there are some major dierences between lanon`s
phenomenology and some o the major proponents o phenomenology. Unlike the great German
phenomenologist Ldmund lusserl, or instance, who is considered by most commentators to be the
lather o what most contemporary philosophers, social scientists, and literary theorists mean by
phenomenology,` whose radical moe inward led to a controersial 1ranscendental Lgo,`
lanon`s radical moe inward led to lied-experience and the collapse o the symbolic. lanon walked
with lusserl ,through Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, methodologically, but they eentually departed
toward dierent horizons. lanon`s phenomenology is, then, avoviav phenomenology. le issues a
radical critique at the leel o signs and symbols, and een at the way he utilized the signs and
symbols o his inestigation.
In eect, then, with tac/ /iv, !bite Ma./., a new type o text was born. It is a way o
writing that, ironically, in spite o lanon`s quips and jibes at the Caribbean, is peculiarly Caribbean.
40

It is a creolized style o writing, wherein the writer addresses problems without presumptions o
disciplinary, linguistic, nor stylistic allegiance. Although some Caribbean thinkers may not see
themseles as inluenced by lanon, the style o writing that emerges rom those who decide to
negotiate the diide between the poetic and the historical is such that it stands, albeit oten ironically,
in his shadow.

E&$-0!
!

1. See Kwame Gyekye`s .v ..a, ov .fricav Pbito.ob,: 1be ./av Covcetvat cbeve ,Philadelphia: 1emple
Uniersity Press,, pp. 126-128.
2. lor discussion, see Lewis R. Gordon, i.tevtia .fricava: |vaer.tavaivg .fricava i.tevtiat 1bovgbt
,New \ork: Routledge, 2000,, chapter 4. lor dynamics o not being seen by irtue o being seen, see
also Lewis R. Gordon, aa aitb ava .vtibtac/ Raci.v ,Amherst, N\: lumanity Books, 1995,, Part
III.
3. 1his book should hae been written three years ago. . . But these truths were ire in me then` ,Pv 6
, 9,.
All citations o tac/ /iv, !bite Ma./. will occur in this orm with reerences to pages in the lrench
edition with a slash and parallel reerence to the Lnglish edition. 1he translations are either modiied
or my own. 1he ull citations to both editions are: Peav voire, va.qve. btavc. ,Paris: Lditions du Seuil,
1952, and tac/ /iv, !bite Ma./., trans. Charles Lamm Markman ,New \ork: Groe Press, 196,.
4. See 1be Dirive Covea, of Davte .tigbieri, rot. 1, vfervo, trans. Allen Mandelbaum ,New \ork: Bantam
Books, 1980,. tac/ /iv, !bite Ma./. is not lanon`s only updating o Dante`s classic meditation on
hell. le returns to it in his inal work, e. Davve. ae ta terre, prace de Jean-Paul Sartre ,Paris:
lranois Maspero diteur S.A.R.L.,Paris: Lditions Gallimard, 1961,1991,, where the connections are
een stronger. In that work, each chapter presents a hellish world o iolence, betrayal, and reenge
at the end o which lanon issues a plea or humanity to shed its skin and set aoot a new humanity.
5. Quoted in ,Pv 14 , 18,, it reers to Valery`s Cbarve. ,Paris: Gallimard, 1952,.
6. 1hese quotations are on pp. 15 and 16 o Pv. See 20-21.
. I was once queried by an editor o another piece about the correlation o blacks with Caliban.
Caliban, she noted, was despicable, and it is degrading to associate blacks with him. \hat she ailed
to realize is that or an antiblack racist, all blacks are ultimately niggers.` And what are niggers` i
not Caliban
8. Chester lontenot Jr., lrantz lanon: 1he Reolutionary,` ir.t !orta 2, no. 3 ,199,: 2.

9. Mayotte Capcia, ]e .vi. vartivqvai.e ,Paris: Corra, 1948, and a vegre..e btavcbe ,Paris: Corra, 1950,.
10. 1. Denean Sharpley-\hiting, ravt avov: Covftict. ava evivi.v. ,Lanham: Rowman & Littleield,
1998,.
11. Abdoulaye Sadji`s îvi, vvttre..e av evegat appears in Pre.evce .fricaive 1-3. See also his article,
Littrature et colonisation,` Pre.evce .fricaive 6 ,Ari 1949,.
12. 1his letter was quoted by Jobi lanon, Pour lrantz, pour notre mere,` av. rovtiere 5-11 ,lebruary
1982,: 10, and it appears in Buhlan`s avov ava P.,cbotog, of Ore..iov, p. 19. 1his translation is
Bulhan`s.
13. Jacques Lacan, crit.: . etectiov, trans. by Alan Sheridan ,New \ork and London: \.\. Norton,
19,. lor a recent, succinct exposition o Lacan`s thought in ways releant to themes in this essay,
see Daid Ross lryer, 1be vterrevtiov of tbe Otber: tbicat vb;ectirit, iv eriva. ava acav ,New \ork:
1he Other Press, 2004,.
14. \illy Apollon, lour Seasons in lemininity or ovr Mev iv a !ovav`. ife,` 1ooi 12, no. 2
,September 1993,: 103.
15. 1oni Morrison, 1be tve.t ,e ,New \ork: \ashington Square Press, 190,, p. 22. lor elaboration o
this interpretation o Morrison`s text, see Gary Schwartz, 1oni Morrison at the Moies: 1heorizing
Race through vitatiov of ife ,or Barbara,,` in i.tevce iv tac/: .v .vtbotog, of tac/ i.tevtiat
Pbito.ob,, ed. with an intro. by Lewis R. Gordon ,New \ork: Routledge, 199,, pp. 111-128.
16. Angela \. Dais, !ovev, Race, ava Cta.. ,New \ork: Vintage, 1983,.
1. Jean Baudrillard, eavctiov, trans. by Brian Singer ,New \ork: St. Martin`s Press, 199,, p. 69.
18. leinz Kohut, 1houghts on Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage,` in etfP.,cbotog, ava tbe vvavitie.:
Reftectiov. ov a êr P.,cboavat,tic .roacb, ed. by C.B. Strozier ,New \ork: \.\. Norton, 1985,, pp.
124-60.
19. Pv 53 , 66. Ren Maran`s text is |v bovve areit av avtre. ,Paris: Lditios Arc-en-Ciel, 194,.
20. Dominique Mannoni, Pro.ero ava Catibav: 1be P.,cbotog, of Cotoviatiov ,New \ork: Praeger, 1964,.
21. 1his is the more accurate translation o the title o the ith chapter, which was misleadingly
translated by Charles Lamm Markman as 1he lact o Blackness.`
22. Robert Gooding-\illiams`s anthology Reaaivg Roave, Kivg, Reaaivg |rbav |ri.ivg ,New \ork and
London: Routledge 1993, and my anthology i.tevce iv tac/: .v .vtbotog, of tac/ i.tevtiat
Pbito.ob, are two recent examples.
23. lor discussion o the Banania product, see Jan Nedereen Pieterse, !bite ov tac/: vage. of .frica ava
tac/. iv !e.terv Povtar Cvttvre ,New laen and London: \ale Uniersity Press, 1992,, pp. 162-3.
24. D.A. Masolo, .fricav Pbito.ob, iv earcb of aevtit, ,Bloomington: Indiana Uniersity Press, 1994,, p.
25.
25. bia.

26. 1his remark is unortunately oten attributed to Senghor without an examination o the context in
which he made it in iberte: êgritvae et bvvavi.ve ;e..ai) ,Paris: Lditions du Seuil, 1964,. Senghor was
here explicating Comte Arthur de Gobineau`s position rom ..ai .vr tìvegatite ae. race. bvvaive.,
prsentation de lubert Juin ,Paris: P. Belond, 196,, olume 2, chapter . Senghor`s actual position
is that a healthy human being should maniest both emotion and reason. lor more discussion o this
matter, see Jacques Louis lymans, eoota eaar evgbor: .v vtettectvat iograb, ,Ldinburgh:
Ldinburgh Uniersity Press, 191,.
2. lor a wonderul elaboration o this notion o secretion,` see Kelly Olier, 1be Cotoviatiov of P.,cbic
ace: . P.,cboavat,tic ociat 1beor, of Ore..iov ,Minneapolis, MN: Uniersity o Minnesota Press,
2004,. Also, lanon`s remark about rb,tbv betrays his sentiments toward music ersus written poetry
or the expression o black selhood. lor critical discussion o his position, see my essay, Must
Reolutionaries Sing the Blues: 1hinking through lanon and the Leitmoti o the Black Arts
Moement,` in êr 1bovgbt. ov tbe tac/ .rt. Morevevt, ed. by Margo Craword and Lisa Gail Collins
,New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Uniersity Press, 2005,.
28. Michel Cournot, Martiviqve ,Paris: Gallimard, 1948,, pp. 13-14.
29. Anxieties and ears about speciically black men coupling with white women abound in modern
western literature and popular culture. lor a ilm that brilliantly portrays ,albeit perhaps not
intentionally so, lanon`s point about the dangerous black man in the negrophobic white woman`s lie
really being hersel, see Cava,vav ,1992,, where a white emale doctoral student o anthropology
attempts to inestigate an urban myth o a black man with a hook who appears, ater one has looked
in the mirror and mentioned his name ie times, and eiscerates his ictim. All the stu is there-
mirrors,sel, dangerous black male, phallic hook, but particularly signiicant is that the white emale
protagonist isn`t attacked by him but seduced by him into becoming him, which raises the question o
whether she were he and he were she in the irst place.
30. See, or example, Gwen Bergner`s 1he Role o Gender in lanon`s tac/ /iv, !bite Ma./.,`
Pvbticatiov. of tbe Moaerv avgvage ...ociatiov 110, no. 1 ,January 1995,:141-151.
31. In act, on the island o Jamaica, those women are called Stellas.` See, e.g., Jacqueline Sanchez
1aylor, Dollars Are a Girl`s Best lriend lemale 1ourists` Sexual Behaiour in the Caribbean,`
ociotog, 35, no. 3 ,2001,: 49-64, where the author discusses antasy` as a commodity o exchange
in sex tourism.
32. lor discussion o the existentially serious, see aa aitb ava .vtibtac/ Raci.v, chap. 6.
33. See Brian Locke, 1he Impact o the Black-\hite Binary on Asian-American Identity,` Raaicat
Pbito.ob, Rerier 1, no. 2 ,1998,:98-125.
34. See, or example, Andrea Dworkin`s vtercovr.e and Ldmund \hite`s award-winning Cevet: . iograb,
,New \ork: Vintage, 1994,.
35. lor discussions o the demand or bodies without points o iew, see Lewis R. Gordon, aa aitb ava
.vtibtac/ Raci.v, chaps. 14-16.
36. See Martin Buber, ava 1bov, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith ,New \ork: Scribner`s Sons, Collier Books,
1958,.
3. 1hese themes o suering and redemption in the possibility the uture oers are themes to which he

will return in e. Davve. ae ta terre.
38. lontenot, pp. 25 and 2.
39. See Maurice Natanson, 1be rotic ira: Pbevovevotog, iv iteratvre, with a oreword by Judith Butler
,Princeton: Princeton Uniersity Press, 1998,.
40. I cannot deelop this claim here because o the limits o space. Interested readers may wish to
consult the many discussions, in 1be C..R. ]ave. ]ovrvat, o how Caribbean thinkers write. See
especially the set o issues in 2001, which eature discussions o \ilson larris, Lduoard Glissant,
Sylia \ynter, C.L.R. James, lanon, and many others.

Through The Zone of Nonbeing: A Reading of Black Skin, White Masks in Celebration of Fanon's Eightieth Birthday

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Through The Zone of Nonbeing: A Reading of Black Skin, White Masks in Celebration of Fanon's Eightieth Birthday

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Through the Zone of Nonbeing:

A Reading of Black Skin, White Masks in Celebration of

It is a double-standard that is demanded:

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