108 / Black SHq Whtte Masþ*

of that wo¡ld is corrbined with an urge to dominatg anurge which is infantile in origin and whiãh ro"ia .d"ft"uoohas failed to disciplino. The reason the colonial hi;r;lfgives for his flight-whether he says it was ttre desire tohavel, or tle desire to escape from the cradle or f¡om the'ancielt panapets,- or whether he says that he simplywanted a freer life-is of no consequenoe. . . . It is ahãysa question of compromising with the desire for a world witl-out men.88

If one adds that many Europeetrs go to the coloniesb-ecause it is possible for tlem tõ grow rich quicHy there,that with rare exceptions tle cãIooi"l is ì mérchant,or ¡ather a bafficker, one will have grasped the psychol-ory of the man who arouses in the aotochthooo*þprt"-99" 't" feeling 9f -rnfelority.o .As for the t"talagasy'dependenry complex,o at least in the only form in *iri.twe can reach it and analyze i! it too proceeds from thearrival of white colonizers on tle islanã. From its otherform, from this original complex in its pure state thatsupposedly characterized the Malagasy -eotality through-glt_$u whole precolonial period, it-appears to me tlatM. Manne¡¡ lacks thr _sljglrtest basr oiïhich to groundany conchxion-applicable to the situation, the proilems,or the potentialities of the Malagasy in the pró;tüur;:

36. lbìd.,p. f08.

Frqnte Fqnon

C*co.ng.t.".\z¿ \ Ct'.ørle 5 Lq.n M,rrKrnann ' Ní '" Aroveg¡eSS, t1ø?)

Chapter Five

TIIE FACT OF BLACKNESS

'Dirty niggerl" Or simpl¡ 'Look, a Negrot-I came into the world imbued with the will to ffnd a

¡saning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attainto the source of the world, and then I found that I wâs ¿ulobject in the midst of other objects.

Sealed into tlat crushing objecthood, I tr¡¡ned be-seechingly to others. Their attention was a liberation, nrn-ning over my body zuddenly abraded into nonbeing,endowing me once more with an âglity that I had thougþtlost, and by takíng me out of the world, restoring me to i¿But just as f reached the other side, I stumbled, and themovements, the attitudes, the glances of the other ffxedme there, in the sense in which a chemical solution is fixedby I dye._ f was indignant; I demanded an explanation._Nothing happened. I bu¡st aparL Now the fragmentshave been put together again by another self.'pAs long as the black man is among his oln, he will

have no oceasion, except in minor intemal conflicts, toexperience his being througb others. There is of cou¡se tlemoment of 'teing for others," of which Hegel spealcs,but every ontology is made unattainable in a colonizedand civilized society. It would seem that this fact hasnot been given suficient attention by tåose who havediscussed the question. In the Welta¡tsclnuung oL a colæ

109

B\o¿k- 5Kr.r

1I0 / Black Skín, White Masþ,s

^..Iot permit us to un

!,\F* not only mustÞ-black in relation to

it on themselves to remind us that this proposition has aconverse. I say that this is false. The black man has no

F¡antz Fa¡wn / 111

uncertaintflff loow.that if I want t9 smgke, I :hdlhave to reach íut my rigþt arm and take the pack ofcigarettes lying at the other end of the table. The matches,however, are in the drawer on the lefg and I shall haveto lean back slightly. Änd all these movements a¡e madenot out of habit but out of implicit Ìnowledge. A slowcomposition of my self as a body in the middle of aspatial and temporal world-such seems to be the schema.It does not impose itself on me; it is, ráther, a definitivestruch:ring of the self and of the world-definitive be-cause it creates a real dialectic between my body andtle worlo-

For several years certain laboratories have been tryingto produce a senrm for 'denegritcation"; with all theea¡neshess in the world, Iaboratories have sterilized their

that I r¡sed had been provided for me not by'residualsensatÍons and perceptions primarily of a tactile, vestib-ular, kinesthetiq and üsual character,a but by tle other,the white man, who had woven me out of a thousanddetails, anecdotes, stories. I thought that what I had inhand was to construct a physiological self, to balancespace, to localize sensations, and here I was called on formore.

"Loolç a Negrol" ft was an external stimulus thatflicked over me as I passed by. I made a tight smile.

'Looh a Negrol" It was true. It amused me.

1. Jean Lhermitte, L'Image de tnt¡e coqps (Paris, NouvelleRevue critigue, 1939), p. 17.

ll2 I Black Skìn, Whíte Masþ,s

'Loob a Negrot'The circle was drawing a bit tígþter'I made no secret of mY artusement.

'Mam4 see the Nãgrot Im frigþtenedl" FrigþtercdlFrigþtenedt Now they were begin4ng to be afraid of-mr'I m-ade up my mind io l"gh myself to tears, but laugþterhad become impossible.

I could oo lu:ogt hogh, because I already Ïo9w thatthere were legends, storiãs, history, and above ùllúctot'tc'iúy, which i l"¿ learned about from-faspen' 11q'assailed. at varior¡s points, the corporeal schema crumbled'its place taken by ã racial epiderrral schema' In the train¡t ias no longei a question of being awa¡e of my bodyín the third person but in a triple person. In $e- traþI was given oot ooe but two, tbree places. I ha¿t alreadystoppeã being amused. It was not that I was ffnclingfebrile coordinates in the world. I existed tríply: I oc*cupied. space. I moved toward the otüer . . . and theevanescent other, hostile but not opaçlue' trans¡rarentnot there, disappeared. Nar¡sea. . . .

I was tespoosibl" at tle same time for my bod¡ formy race, foi ny ancestors. I subjected myself to an ob-iective s¡nmin¿fisn, I dis

ated, rmable to be abroad, $,ith the other, the white man, who unmercifully Ím-v' prisoned me, I took myself far ofi lrom m¡-own presenoe'

iar indeed, and made myself an obiect.iWhat else couldit be for me but an amputation, an excision, a hemorrhagethat spattered my whole body with black blood? But Idid not want this revision, this thematization. All I wantedwas to be a man among other men. I wauted to come

F¡anE Farcn / 113

Iíthe and young Ínto a world that was or¡rs and to help

-I was the grandson of sl¿ves in exactly the same way inwhích kesiãeut Lebn¡n was the grandson of tax-payinghard-working lreasants. In the m4í', the panic soonvanÍshed"

away?'Á tr,t.ttioi.an, a native of 'or¡r' old coloniesÍ\ühere shall I hide?

lL4 I Black Skín, Whãte Masþ,s

is shivering, the nigger is shivering because he is cold,the little boy is trembling because he is afraÍd of thenigger, the nigger is shivering with cold, that cold thatgoes through yo* bones, the handsome little boy istembling because he thinls that the nigger is quiveringwith rage, the little white boy throws hímself into bismothet's arrns: Mama, the niggert going to eat me up.

^AIl round me the white man, above the sky tears atits navef the earth rasps under my feet, and tlere is awhite song, a white song. .AIl this whiteness that br¡¡nsme....

I sit down at the ff¡e and I become aware of -y r¡niform.I had not seen it. It is indeed ugly. I stop there, for whocan tell me what beauty is?

Where shall I tnd shelter from now on? I felt aneasily identifiable flood mounting out of the countlessfacets of my being. I was about to be angry. The füewas long since out, and once mo¡e the nigger was Eem-bling.

"Look how handsome that Negro isl . . ."'Kiss the handsome Negro's ass, madamel"Sha.me flooded her face. At last I was set f¡ee from my

rumination. .A,t the same time f accomplished two things:I identified my enemíes and I made a scene. .4. grandslam. Now one would be able to laugþ.

The ûeld of battle having been ma¡ked out, I enteredthe lists.

What? While I was forgettiog, forgiving and wantingonly to love, my message was flung back in my face likea slap. The white world, þe only honorable one, barredme from all participation.S, man was expected to behavelike a man. I was expected to behave like a black man-or at least like a nigger. I shouted a greeting to the world

F¡øntz Fønon / 115

memory. My supposed ínferiorityP A hoax that it was

Whatl 'When it was I who had. every reason to hate,to despise, f was rejected? 'When I should have been

sligþtest recognition?for me to get away

M.l,N. since the other hesitated "iJ"ïm *,ï:'iremained only one solution: to make myself lnown.

Åll the same, the |ew ca¡ be unloown in his Jewishness.He is not wholly what he is. One hopes, one waits. Hisactions, his behavior are the finat determinant. He isa white man, and, apart from some rather debatablecharacteristics, he can sometimes go unnoticed. He belongs to the race of those who since the beginning of timehave never loown cannibalism. 'What an idei to eatone's fatherl Simple enough, one has only not to be anigger. Granted, the Jews a¡e ha¡assed-what am I think-ing of? They are hunted down, exterminated, eremated.But these are little family quarrels. The Jew is disliked

lI'6 / Black Skin, Whíte Møslcs

from the moment he is backed dovm. But in my caseeverything takes on a neu guise. I am given no chance.I am overdetermined from without. I am the slave notof the 'idea" that others bave of me but of my ownaplrefirance.

I move slowly in the world, actustomed now to seekno longer for upheaval. I progress by crawling. Andalready I am being dissected under white eyes, the onlyreal eyes. I an fred. Having adjusted their microtomes,theyrobjectiveþ cut away slices of my reality. I am Iaidba¡Nfeel,I see in those white faces that it is not a ne\ñtman who has come in, but a new kind of man, a nswgenus. Wh¡ itt a Negrot

I slip into corners, and my long antennae pick up thecatch-phrases sher¡m over the surface sf things-niggerunderwear smells of nigger-nigger teeth are white-nigger feet a¡e big-the nigger's barrel chest-I sIþ intooolfrersi, f remain silent, f sÞive for anonyrrity, for in-vÍsibility. Looh I will accept the lot, as long as no onenotices mel

'Oh, I want you to meet my black füend. . . . AiméCésaire, a black man and a universþ graduate. . . .Marian Anderson, the ûnest of Nego singers. . . . Dr.Cobb, who invented whÍte blood, is a Nego. . . . Here,say hello to my friend from Martinique (be careful, he'sexhemeþ sensitive). . . ."

gham6. Shame and self-contempt Nausea When peoplelike me, they tell me it is in spite of my color. When theydislike me, ttrey ¡rcint out that it is not because of mycolor. Either wa¡ I am lockcd into the infernal circle.

I hün away from these inspectors of the Ârk before theFlood and I attach myself to my brothers, Negroes likemyself. To my horror, they too reject me. ïhey a¡e almost

Frantz Fawn I lnwhite. .And besides they are about to marry white ìromen.They will have children faintly tinged wÍth brown Wholnows, perbaps littie by little. . . .

I had been dre¡ming.'I want you to rmderstand, sir, I am one of the best

füends the Negro has in Lyon."The evidence was there, r¡nalterable. My blac}ness

was there, dark and unarguable. An¿l it tormented me,pursued me, .listgrbed me' angered me.

Negroes are savages, bnrtes, illiterates. But in my o\rncase I lnew that these statements were false. lhere wasa myth of the Negro that had to be destroyed at all costs.The time had long since passed when a Negro priest wasan occasion for wonder. We had physicians, professors,statesmen. Yes, but something out of the ordinary stillcltrng to such crises. -\Me have a Senegalese historyteacher. He is quite brigþt . . . Our doctor is colored.He is very gentle."

It was always the Negro teacher, the Negro doctor;brittle as I was becoming I shivered at the sligþtestpretext I Ìnew, for instance, that if the physician made amistake it would be the end of him and of all those whocame after hím. What could one expecÇ after all, froma Negro physician? Âs long as everything went well, hewas praised to the skies, but look out no nonsense, underany conditionsl lbe black physician can never be su¡ehow close he is to disgrace. I tell you, I was walled in:No exception was made for my refined manners, or mylnowledge of literatr¡¡e, or my understanding of thequantum theory.

I requested, I demandetl explanations. Gently, in thetone tlat one uses with a chitd, they inhoduced me tothe existence of a certain view that was held by certain

118 / Blnck Skìn, Whìte Masþs

people, but, I was always told,'We must hope that ítwill very soon disappear." What was it? Color preiudice.

It [colour preiudice] is nothing more than the unreasoninghatred of one race for another, the contempt of the shongerand richer peoples for those whom they consider inferiorto themselves. and the bitter resentrnent of those who arekept in subiection and a¡e so frequentþ insulted. fu colourÍs the most obvior:s outwa¡d manifestation of race it hasbeen made the criterion by which men are iudged' ine'spective of their social or educational attainments. The-lighl-skinned races have come to despise all those of a darkercolor:r, and the da¡k-skinned peoples will no longer acceptwithout protest the inferior ¡nsition to whÍch they have beenrelegated3

Kt n"¿ read it rightly. It was hate; I was hated, despised,detested, not by the neigþbor across the street or mycousin on my mother's side, but by an entÍre race. I wasup agaínst something unreasoned. The psychoanalystssay that nothing is more baumatizing for the young childthan his encounters with what is rational. I would person-ally say that for a man whose only weapon is reason thereis nothing more neurotic than contact with un¡eason.

I felt knife blades open within me. I resolved to defendmyself. fu a good tactician, I intended to rationalize theworld and to show the white man that he was mistaken.

In the Jew, Jean-Paul Sa¡tre says, there is

a sort of ímpassioned imperialism of reason: for he wishesnot only to cnnvince others that he is rigbt; his goal is topersuade them that there is an absolute and unconditionedvalue to rationalism. He feels himself to be a missionary ofthe universal; against the'r:niversality of the Catholic reli-

2. Sir AIan Bums, Colou¡ Preludiæ (London, Allen and Unwin,1948), p. 16.

F¡ontz Fa¡wn / 119

gion, from which he is excluded, he asserts the'catholicity-of the rationaf an ínsrument by which to attain to thetnrth and establ¡h a spiritual bond among men.E

^And, the author adds, though there may be Jews whohave made intuition tle basic category of their philosophy,their intuition

has no resemblance to the Pascalian subdety of spirit, andit is this latter-based on a thousand imperceptible percep-tiors-which to the Jew seems his worst enemy. fu for Berg-son, his philosophy offers the curious appearance of ananti-intellectunlist docbine constucted entireþ by the mostrational and most critical of intelligences. It is througha¡gument that he establishes the existence of pure duration,of philosophic intuition; and that very intuition wbich dis-covers du¡ation or life, is itself universal, since anyone m ypractice it, and it leads towa¡d the universal, since its obiectscan be tamed and conceived.a

With enthusiasm I set to cataloguing and probing mysunoundings.As times changed, one had seen the Catholicreligion at füst iostify and then condemn slavery andprejudices. But by referring everything to the idea of thedignig of man, one had ripped prejudice to sbredsAfter much reluctance, the scientists had conceded. thattle Negro was a human being; ín oíoo and. d¿ oítro theNegro had. been proved analogous to the white man:tfre same morphology, ttre same histology. Reason wasconfident of victory on every level. I put all the partsback together. But I had to change my tune.

That victory played cat and mouse; it made a fool ofme. As the other put it when I was present, it was not;

3. Antì-semite and, Ieu (New Yorlç Grove hess, 1980), pp.112-r13.

4. lbid.,p. 115.

In I Black Skin, Whíte Masþ.s

when it was there, I was no longer. In the abstract therewas agreement: The Negro is a human being. That isto say, amended the less trmly convinced, that like ushe has his heart on the left side. But on certain points thewhite man remained innactable. Under no conditionsdid he wish any intimacy between the races, for it is atruism tlat *crossings between wideþ different races canIower the physícal and mental level. . . . Until we have amore deffnite lnowledge of the effect of race-crossings weshall certainly do best to avoid crossinç between lvidelydifferent races."6

For my own part, I woultl certainly Ïnow how to reacL^And in one sense, if I were asked, for a definition of my-self, I would say that I am one who waits; I investigatemy surroundings, I interpret everything in terms of whatI discover, I become sensitive.

In the füst chapter of the history that the others havecompiled for me, the foundation of cannibelism has beenmade eminently plain in order that I may not Iose sigþt ofit My cbromosomes were supposed to have a few thickeror thinner genes representing cannibalism. In addition tothe ser-knked, the schola¡s had now discovered the ¡acíalAnlccd.s What a shameful scÍencel

But I understand. this 'þsychological mechanism." Forit is a matter of common knowledge that the mechanismis only prychological Two centuries ago I was lost tohumanity,I was a slave forever. .And then came men whosaid that it all had gone on fa¡ too long My tenaciorxness

5. Jon .{lf¡ed M¡oen, Ta¡monic and Disharmonic Bace-cmss-ings," The Second Intemational Congress of Eugenics (1921),Eqenícs in Raæ and Stûe , vol. II, p. 60, quoted in Sir Alan Burnqop. cit., p. 120.

6. In Engüsh in the original (Translator's note.)

Frantz Fanon I l2ldid the rest; f was saved from the civilizing deluge. I havegone forward.

Too late. Everything is anticipated, thought out, demon-strated, made the most of. My hembling hands take holdof nothing; the vein has been mined out. Too latel Butonce again I want to understand.

Since the time when someone first mourned the factthat he had a¡rived too late and everything had been

oracles or exhausted themselves in attempts to plot thewanderings of Ulyssesl The pan-spiritualists seek to provethe existence of a soul in animals by using this argument:A dog lies down on the grave of his master and starvesto death there. We had to wait for Janet to demonstratetlat the aforesaid. dog in conEast to man, simply lackedthe capacity to liquidate the past. We speak of the gloryof Greece, Artaud says; but, he adds, if modern man canno longer r¡nderstand the Cløeplwroi of Aeschylus, it isAeschylus who is to blame. It is tradition to which theanti-semites turn in order to ground the validity of theÍrþoint of view." It is tradition, it is that long historical pasÇit is that blood relation between Pascal and Descartes,that is invoked when the ]ew is told, 'llliere is no pos-sibility of your t",li"g a place in society." Not long ago,one of those gooå Frenchmen said in a bain where Iwas sitting: Just let the real French virtues keep goingand the race is safe. Now more than ever, national unionmust be made a realÍty. Let's have an end of internalstrifel Let's face up to the foreigners (here he tu¡nedtoward my cor:ner) no matter who they are."

ln I Blnck Skín, Whíte Masþ,s

ft must be said fu his defense that he stank of cheapwine; if he had been capable of it, he would have toldme that my emancipated-slave blood could not possiblybe stirred by the name of Villon or Taine.

An outragelThe |ew and I: Since I was not satisfied to be racíalized,

by l lucþ turn of fate I \ilâs humani.ed. I joined the Jew,my brother in misery.Ân outragel

was universally right-by which I meant that I was answer_

man, it is understandable that I could have made upmy mind to utter my Negro cry. Little by little, puttin-gout pseudopodia here and there, I secreted a race. .fia tnaîrace staggered under the burden of a basic element. Whatwas it? Rhgthml Listen to ou¡ singer, Léopold Senghor:

It is the thíng that is most perceptible and least material.It is the archety¡re of th. e vital element. It is the first con-

Frantz Fonon I 123

pudty, this is rhythm in the masterpieces of Negro art,especially sculpture. It is comlnsed of a theme-sanlphrralfoml-which is set in opposition to a sister theme, as inhala-tion is to exhalation, and that is repeated. It is not tbe kindof syrnmetry that gives rÍse to monotony; rh¡hn is alive,it is free. . . . This is how rhythm afrects what is least intel-lectual in us, t¡ralnically, to make us penetrate to the spiri-tuafity of the object; and that cha¡acter of abandon which isor¡¡s is itself rhythmic.?

Had I read that tight? I read it again with redoubledattentíon. From the oplnsite end of the white world amagical Negro cuttu¡Jwas hailing me. Negro sculpturetI began to flush with pride. Was this or:r salvation?

I had rationalized tle world and the world had rejectedme on the basis of color prejudice. Since no agreementwas possible on the level of reason, I th¡ew myself backtoward unreason. It was up to the white man to be moroirrational than I. Out of the necessities of my struggleI had chosen the method of regression, but the fact remained that it \ilas an u¡familiar rüeapon; here I a:n athome; I aur made of the irrational; I wade in the irrationalUp to the neck in the irrational. And now how my voicevibratesl

Those who invented neither gunpowder nor the compæsThose who never learned to conquer steam or elecEicityThose who never explored the seas or the shesBut they know the farthest corners of the land of anguishThose who never Ìoew any journey save that of a,bductionThose who lea¡ned to kneel in docilityThose who were domesticated and Christia¡i'edThose who were injected with bastardy. . . .

7. "Ce que l'homme noir apporte," in Claude Norcle¡ IlHortmefu cuil¿u¡ (Paris, Plon, 1939), pp. 309-8f0.

l2l I Bltck Skín, White Møsks

Yes, all those are my brothers-a titter brotherhood"imprisons all of us alike. Having stated the minor thesis,I went overboard after something else.

.. . But those without whom the earth wor¡ld not bethe earth

Tr¡mescence all the more fruiúulth¡nthe empty landstill more the lantlStorehowe to guard and ripen allon earth that is most ea¡thMy bladmess Ís no stone, its deafaesshurled against the clamor of the dayMy blacloess is no drop of lifeless wateron the dead eye of the worldMy blacloess is neither a tower nor a cathedralIt tbrusts into the red flesh of the sunIt thrusts into the burning flesh of the rLyIt hollows througb the dense dimay of its own

píllar of patiencef

Egahl the tom-tom chatters out the cosmic message.OnIy the Negro has the capacity to convey it, to decipheri[s ¡¡s¡ning, its import. futride the world, my strongheels spurring into the flanls of the world, I sta¡e intothe shoulders of the world as the celebrant sta¡es at themidpoint between the eyes of the sacritcíal victim.

But they ¿¡bandon themselves, possessed, to the essenosof all rhings, howing nothing of externals but possessed bythe movement o¡ .¡1 things

uncaring to subdue but playing the play of the worldtruIy the eldest sons.of the world

8. Ainé Césaire, Cøhb¡ ùun ¡etou¡ au Poys notal (París, Presence .Afric¿íne 1956), pp. 77-78.

F¡antz Fa¡øon I l2:i

spark of the sacred ffre of the Worldfesh of the flesh of the world, tbrobbing with the

very novement of the worldP

and fed me.'Bloodt Bloodt All or¡r blood stirred by the male heart

of the sun.ao

mother love, this mystic, carnal marriage of the groupand the cesmos.

I\Laoðet sønele øn Aftíqw ¡aire, a work rich in per-ceptions, De Pédrals implies that always in -Africa' nomatter what ûeld Ís sh¿lied, it rry¡ll have a certain magico'social shuctt¡re. He adds:

All these are the elements that one tnds again on a stillgreater scale in tbe domain of secret societies. To the ex-ten! moreover, to whic.h persons of either sex, subjected tocircr¡mcision durÍng adolescrcnce, are bound under penattyof death not to reveal to the uninitiated what they baveexperÍenced"secret societygood ground

9. Ihìt1.,p.78.LO. Ibìtl.,p.79.

l2l3 I Black Skín, White Masþ,s

circr¡mcision and the rites that they embellish as constihr-tive of rnins¡ secret societies.ll

I walk on white neils. $[s.ts of water threaten my soulon füe. Face to face with these rites, I am doubly atert.Black magict Orgies, witches' sabbatbs, heathen cere.monies, amulets. Coitus is an occasion to call on the godsof the clan. It is a sacred act, pure, absolute, bringinginvisible forces into action. What is one to think of allthese manifestations, all these initiations, all these acts?From very direction I am assaulted by the obscenity ofda.ces and of words. Abnost at my ea¡ there is a song:

First our hearts burned hotNow they are cpldAII we think of now is Love\ühen we retu¡¡ to the villageWhen we see the great phallusAh how tlen we will make loveFor our pafts \ilill b" dry and clean.u

llhe soil, which only a moment ago \ilas still a tamedsteed, begins to ¡evel. fue these virgíns, these nymphomaniacs? Black Magic, primitive mentality; animism,animal eroticism, it all floods over me. AII of it is typicalof peoples tlat have not kept pace with tle evolution ofthe human race. Or, if one prefers, this is humanity atits lowest. Having reached this point I was long reluctantto commit myself. Aggression was in the sta¡s. I had tochoose. What do I mean? I had no choice. . . .

Yes, we are-we Negroes-backward, simplg free inou¡ behavior. That is because for rx the body is not some-

ll. De Pédrals, fr dß sennlle en AltfuTue rcíre (paris, payot),P. 83.

._12: \ M. Vgrgr$, Les rítes sectds iles prímítíls ile lOubangut(Paris, Payol 1951), p. ll3.

F¡antz Fotto¡t I lgl

the Âfro-American lnet, I-angston Hugþes, says:I have lnown riversancient da¡k rive¡smY soul has grown deePlike the deeP rivers.

should be kept Ín mind.16

18. My italics-F.F.14. My italics-F.F.15. Léopoltt Sengþor, -Ce que ltomme noh apporte,'in Norde¡

op. cit., p. 205.

128 | Black SHn, Whíte Mosþ,s

Dever understood this magic zubstitutÍon. The white manwants the world; he wants ¡¡ fe¡ himself alone. He ffndshimself predestined master of this world. He enslaves iL.An acquisitive relation is established between the worldand him. But there exist other values that fft only myforms. Like a magician, I robbed the white man of "acertain world," forever after lost ¡e him and his. Whentlat happened, the white man must have been rockedbachva¡d by a force that he could not identify, so littleused as he is to such reactions. Somewhere beyond tleobiective world of farms and banana tuees and rubbertelsfi had subtþ brougbt the real world into being. Theessence of the world \ilas my forh¡ne. Between the worldand me a relation of coexistence \ras established. I haddiscovered tle primeval One. My þeaking hands" toreat the hysterical tb¡oat of the world. The white man hadthe anguished feeling that I was escaping from him andthat I was taking sensthing with me. He went tbroughny pockets. He thrust probes into the Ieast circumvolu-tion of my brain. Everywhere he found only the obvious.So it was obvious that I had a secret. I was interrogated;turning away with an air of mystery I mu¡srured:

Tokowal¡ uncle, do you remember the nights gone byWhen my head weighed heavy on the back of yor.u patience

orHolding my hand your hand led ne by shadows and signsThe fields are fowers of glowworms, sta¡s hang on the

bushes, on the trees

i*gÉ hum, swarms of reddishthe crickets sbrill sounds,

And cpvered tom-tom, breathing in the dista¡ce of theDigbt.

you,-tokowaly, you listen to what cannot be hea¡{ and

F¡øntz Fanon | 12$

you explain to me what the ancestors are saying in theliquid calm of tle constellations,

The bull, the scorpion, tho leoparil, the elephant'and the füh we lnow,

.And the whiæ pomp of the Spirits ín the heavenly sbellthat has no end"

But now comes the radiance of the goddess Moonand the veils of the shadows fall.

Night of .Africa, my black "ighg myfical antl brÍgbÇ black

and shining.lc

I made myself the ¡net of the world' The whíte manhad for¡nd a poetry ín which there was nothing poetic'The soul of the white man \il¿ls comrpted, and, as I wastold by a friend who was a teacher in the United States,'The presence of the N is in a$¡ay an ínsurance policy whitesfeei that they have become tu¡n totle men of õIor and ask them for a líttle hr¡r¡an stxten-aîæ.o At last I had been rccognrzed" I was no longer a

7ßÍO.I had soon to change my tune' Only momentarily at a

Iors, the white -* ã*phioed to me that, geneticall-y' fiepresented a stage of dãvebpment: 'You¡ properties haveb"ão "*htttt"d Ëy rx. We have had earth mystigs zuch 11vou will never approacb- Study our history ancl yo¡r -willí"" n"* f* tbis tsion has gone.- Then I bad the feelingthat I was repeating , cy.l". My originality had been

torn out of me. I wePt alive again. But IstereotyPes: the Nwí gerwrís good nature . . .

libility. ...-6*'u sengþor, chorts ixornb¡e (Par¡s, Edidons du seuil'194õ).

180 / Black SHn, Whíte Masþ,s

I had tried to fee myself tbrougþ my kind, but thewhites had thrown themselves on me and hamshungme. I tested the limits of my essence; beyond all doubtthere was not much of it left. It was here that I made mymost remarkable discovery. hoperþ speaking, thÍs dis-covery was a rediscovery.

I nrmmaged frenetically tbrougb all the anHquity of theblack man. lVhat I found there took away my breath. Inhis book Liaboktíon ile lescl¿oage Schoelcher presentedus with compelling arguments. Since then, Frobenirs,ÌYs5tsrmrnn, Delafosse-all of them white-had ioined thechorus: Ségou, Dienné, cities of more than a hund¡edthousand people; accounts of learned. blacls (doctors oftheology who went to Mecca to interpret the Koran). AIIof thag exhumed from the pas! spread \ilith its insides out,made it possible for me to ffnd a valid historic place. lhewhite man \¡¡as wrong, I was not a primitive, not even ahalf-man, I belonged to a race that had already beenworking in gold and silver two thousand years ago. Andtoo there was something else, something else that thewhite man could not understand. Listen:

What sort of men were these, then, who had been to¡naway from their families, their countÍes, their religions,with a savagery "nparalleled in history?

Gentle men, ¡nlite, considerate, unquestionably zuperiorto those who tortu¡ed thenr-that collection of adventu¡erswho slashed and violated and spat on AfrÍca to make thestripping of her the easier.

The men they took away loew how to build houses,govern empires, erect.cities, cultivate telds, mine for metals,weave @tton, forge steel.

Their religion had its own beauty, based on mysticalcunnections with the founder of the city. Their customs werepleasing, built on unity, kindness, respect for age.

Frøntz Fanon / 181

No coercion, only mutual assistance, the joy of living, aËee acceptance of discþline.

Order-Earnestness-Poetry and Freedom.From the untroubled private citizen to the almost fabu-

lous leader there was an unbroken chain of understandingand trust. No science? Indeed yes; but also, to protect themfrom fear, they possessed great myths in which'the mostsubtle observation and the most daring imagination werebalanced and blended. No a¡t? They had their magnitcentsculpture, in which human feeling erupted so un¡estrainedyet always followed ttre obsessive laws of rhythm in itsorganization of the major elements of a materÍal callecl uponto capture, in order to redisbibute, the most secret forces ofthe unÍverse

Monuments in the very heart of .Africa? Schools? Hospi-tals? Not a single goo'cl burgher of the twentieth century,no Durand, no Smith, no Brown even suspects that suchthings existed in Africa before the Er:ropeans came. . . .

But Schoelcher reminds us of their presence, discoveredby Caillé, Mollier¡ the Cander brothers. And, though henowhere reminds us that when the Porhrguese landed onthe banla of the Congo in 1498, they found a rich andflourishing st¿te tlere and that the courtiers of Ambas wered¡essed Ín robes of silk and brocade, at least he knows that.Africa had brought itself up to a iuridical concept of thestate, and he is awa¡e, Iiving in the very flood of imperial-ism, that European civilizatior¡ after all, is only oneþorecÍvilization among many-and not the most merciful.ls

I put the white man back into his place; growingbolder, I iostled him and told him point-blank, "Get usedto me, I am not getting used to anyone." I shouted myIaughter to the stars. The white ma,n, I could see, lv¿ls

L7. lLfué Césaire, Intoduction to Victor Schoelcher, Esclnageet cobnisúbn (Paris, P¡esses Universitaires de France, f948), p. 7.

L8. IbíiL.,p.8.

I¡,i

il

II

l 2 | Bhck.Skía White Masþ*

¡esenú¡I. His reaction time lagged interminably. . . . I hadwon. I was iubilant

out by our lives in big buildings, we will turn to you aswe do to our children-to the innocent, the ingen,ro*, th"

it was snatched au/aymy effort was only a

But tbere is something pe¡e ímportant: The Negro, as wehave said, creates an anti-racist racisr¡ for himsáf. In nosense does he wish to rule.the world: He seelcs the abolitionof all ethnic privileges, uùerever they come from; he assertshÍs solidarity with the oppressed of all colors. Ât once thesubjectivg existential, ethnic idea of negrihñe þasses,- asHegel puts it, into the objective, positive, exact idea of

Frarúz Fonon / 133

prol.etaríd. iFor Césaíre," Sengbor says, othe white man isthe symbol of capital as the Negro is tbat of labor. . . . Be-yond the black-skinned men of his race it is the battle of theworld proletariat that is his song."

That is easy to sa¡ but less easy to think out. .And un-doubtedly it is no coincidence that the most a¡dent poets ofnegritude a¡e at the same time militant Marxists.

But 'I"at does not prevent the idea of race from minglíngwith that of class: The ffrst is concrete and particular, thesecond is universal and abstract; the one stems from whatJaspers calls r¡nderstanding and the other from intellection;the first is the result of a psychobiological syncretism andthe second is a methodical conshuction based on experience.In fact, negritude appears as the minor term of a dialecticalprogression: The theoretical and practical assertion of thesupremacy of the white man is its thesis; the position ofnegritude as an antithetical value is the moment of neg-ativity. þuf fhis negative moment is insuficient by itself, andthe Negroes who employ it lnow this ysry well; they Ìnowthat it is intended to prepare the synthesis or realization ofthe human in a society without races. Thus negritude isthe ¡oot of its own destuction, it is a hansition and not aconclusion, a means and not an ultimate end.lÐ

When f read that page, I felt that I had been robbedof my last chance. I said to my.friends, "The generationof the younger black poets has iust suffered a blow thatc¿ur never be forgiven." Heþ had been sought f¡om afüend of the colored peoples, and that friend had foundno better response than to point out the relativíty of whatthey were doing. For once, that born Hegelian had for-gotten ttrat consciousness has to lose itself in the night oftle absolute, the only condition to attain to conscious-

19. Jean-Paul Sartre, OtPhée Noi¡, preþce to Antlnlagb. dz la*u"ti, poésb aègte øt n;lgache (Pa¡is, Presses Universitai¡es deFrance, 1948), PP. xl fi.

lU I Black Skírù, Wh¿te Masles

ness of self. In opposition to rationalism,.he summoned upthe negative side, but he forgot that this negativity drawsits worth f¡om an almost substantive absoluteness. .A'

consciousness committed to experience is ignorant, hasto be ignoran! of the essences and the determinationsof its being.

Orph"ée Noír is a date in the intellectualization of theexperíence of being black. And Sartre's mistake was notonly to seek the source of the source but in a certainsense to block that sou¡ce:

Will the souroe of Poetry be dried up? Or will the greatblack flood, in spite of everything, color the sea into whichÍt pours itself? It does not matter: Every age has its ownpoetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose anation, a rac€, a class to take up the torch by creating situ-ations that can be expressed or transcended only tbrougbPoetry; sometimes the poetic impulse coincides with therevolutionary impulse, and sometimes they take different@urses. Today let us hail the turn of history that will makeit possible for tle black men to utter 'the great Negrocry \ñ/ith a force that will shake the pillars of the world"(Césaire)30

.And so it is not I who make a meaning for myself, butit is the meaning that was already there, pre-existing,waiting for me. It is not out of my bad niggert misery,my bad nigger's teeth, my bad nigger's hunger that Iwill shape a torch with which to bu¡a down the world,but it is the torch that was already there, waiting forthat turn of history.

In terms of consciousness, the black consciousness isheld out as an absolute density, as filled with itself, astage precediog *y invasion, any abolition of the ego by

F¡antz Fa¡wn / 185

desire. fean-Paul Sartre, in this \York, has destroye¿l blackzeal. In opposition to historical becoming, -there hadalways beeï the ubforeseeable. I needed to lose mysglfcomileteþ in negritude. One da¡ perhaps, in tbe depthsof that unhappy romanticism. . . .

In any casãI needeil not to }now. This stnrggle, thisnew deóüne had to take on an aspect of completeness'Nothing is more unwelcome than the commonplace:'You'll change, mY boy; I \ilas like that too when I wasyoung . . . youll see, it rvill all pass."-

Thã dialectic that brings recessity into the foundationof my freedom drives me out of myself. It shatters myun¡eliected position. Still in terms of consciousness, blackconsciousness is immanent in its own eyes. I am not apotentiality of somethin& I am \pholly what I a¡n. I donot have to look for the universal. No probabiliÇ has anyplace inside me. My Negro conscíousness does not holditself out as a lack. It ûe. It ís its own follower.

BuÇ I will be told, your statements show a misreadingof the processes of history. Listen then:

Africa I have kept your memory .Africayou are inside meLike the splinter in the woundIike a guardian fetÍsh in the center of the villagemake me the stone in your slingmake my mouth the lips of your woundmake my Ìnees the broken pillars of your abaserrent.å,ND YETI want to be of your race aloneworkers peasants of all lands . . .

. . . white worker in Detoit bla& peon ín Alaba¡r¡auncountable nation in capitalist slaverydestiny ranges us shoulder to shoulderrepudiatÍng the ancient maledictioDs of blood taboos20. Ibiil.,p.xliv.

136 / Black Skin, Whíte Masþ,s

we roll away the ruins of ou¡ solih¡desIf the flood is a frontierwe will sEip the gully of its endlesscovering fowIf the Sierra Ís a frontierwe will smash the iaws of the volcanoesupholding the Cordillerasand the pl"i" *ill be the paracle grouncl of the dawnwhere \pe regrot4) ou¡ forces sunderedby the deceits of our maste¡stl,s the contradiction among the featt¡¡escreates the ha:rronY of the facewe prodaim the oneness of the sufieringand the revoltof all the peoples on all tbe face of the earth

a¡d we-mix the mortar of the age of brotherhoodout of the dust of idols.2l

\ Exactly, we will repl¡ Negro experience is not a whole,fòr there is not mereþ ona Negro, there are Negtoes'What a difierence, for instrngs, ¡ this other lnem:

The white man kÍlled my fatherBecause my father was ProudThe white man raped my motherBecause my mother was beautifulThe white man wore out my brother in the hot sun

of the roadsBecause my brother was strongThen the white man ca.rre to meHis hands red with bloodSpat his contempt into my black faceOut of his tYrant's voice:IIey boy, a basin, a towel, water.%

'Bois-dEbène,- helude, in' fuúlrologíe ¿Ì3

Io et malgoclw, P. 113.temps du mart¡/re," in ìbìd., p. 174.

F¡ontrFo¡wn IL7Or this other one:

My brother with teeth that glisten at the complimentsof hypocrites

My biother with goltl-rimmed spectadesOío "yo that tr¡¡o blue at the sound of the Mastert

voÍceMy poor brother in di¡ner iacket with its silk lapelsCt""ti"g and whispering and strutting througþ the

drawing rooûls of CondescensionHow pathetic You arethe sr¡n of yor:r native couûtry is nothing more now

than a shadowOnyour comPosed civilized face

white bY Years of

But when regrrgitating of lgftf grmn$ wo¡dsI-ike the baá that presses on your shouldersYou walk again on the rougþ red ea¡th of AfricaThese **d! of ang¡rish wilt state the rhytbm of yor:r

uneasY gaitI feel so along so alone herela

From time to time one would like to stop' To statereality is a wearing task. Bu! when one has taken it intoãne's heail to try tõ "rpr"* existence, one nrns the risk of

What is certain is that, attYing to grasP mY own

Ihe Other' gave me a nameilhxion. While I was saying

¡9 him¡'My negrituile is neither a tower nor a cathodral'it tlm¡sts into the red fesh of the sun'it tbrusts Ínto the burning flesh of the sþ,

-ffi-""iduiop,T.eRonégat'-

1S8 / Bhck Skín, Whíte Masþ's

it hollows througþ the dense dismay of its oum píllarofpatience..."

of my hands.XMi "ty

gtew more violent: I am a Negro, I am a Negro'Ia¡naNegro....

And there was my poor brother-living out_his neurosisto the extreme anù finiling himself paralyzed:

TrrE NDGBo: I canl ma'a.m.rrzz¡r;ffiy ¡otf

or imaginarY25.\û th" ,"rrr" in which the word is used by lean Wahl in

Existen¡p lwruhv et tronscetùræø (Neuchâtd La Baconnière'1e44).

F¡øntz Fanon / 189

TEE NECRO: I cant shoot white folks.rñãEIEi Reallyt Tbat would bother them, wouldnt it?TrrE NEcRo: Theyte white folks, ma'an.tfãlr*z So whatÞ MaÈe they got a right to bleed you like

a Pig iust because theY're white?THE NEcRo: But theyie white folks.

A feeling of inferiority? No, a feeling of-nonexistence'Sin is N"go as vírtue is white. .All tlose white men in agoup, g,-t i" their hands, cannot be wrong' I "* Stilty'i ¿oïo.-t lnow of what, but I lnow that I am no good'

îrru NEGRo: That's how it goes, ma'an. That's how it alwaysgoes with white folks.

!;Eãz:IEz You too? You feel g"íltYtTrrE NEGRO: YeS, ma'am.26

It is Bigger Thomas-he is afraid, he is terribty 1fr19'He is aft;ã, but of what is he afraid? Of himself' Noone lnows yet who he is, but he lnows that fear willfill tbe *otld when the world ûnds out. And when theworld knows, the world always expects something o! th9Negro. He is afrai¿t lest the world know, he is afraidof the fear that the world would feel if the world lnew'Like that old woman on her lnees who begged me totie her to her bed:'I ¡ust lnow, Doctor: Âny minute that thing will takehold of me."

'What thing?"*The wanting to kill myself. Tie me down, I'm afraid."In the end, Bigger Thomas acts. To put an end to his

tension, he acts, he responds to the world's anticipation.ã26. Jean-Paul Sartre, Tlw Respeaful Prostitute, in Three

-Plays(New-York, Knopf, 1949), pp. 189, 191. Originally, 4 P-utainiespeAueuse (Paris, Çrllim¿¡{, L947). See also Hone of tlw Brooe,a tln by Ma¡k Robson.

27. Iiiùa¡d Wright, Natioe Son (New Yorþ Harper, 1940).

L4A I Block Skin,'Whíte Masþ,s

So it is with the cha¡acter in If He HoII'e¡s Løt Hlm GF-who does do' Thatbig blonde sensual'ofiered, op his mÍs-bess in the end.

The Nego is a toy in the white man's hancls; so, inorder to shatter the I cannotgo to a frlm without e. In theinterval, iust before me. Thepeople in the theater are watching me, e¡nrnínin$ rrl€,waiting for me. A Negro groom is going to appear. Myheart makes my head swim.

The crippled veteran of ttre Pacitc u¡ar says to mybrother, "Resign yourself to your color the way I gotused to my shrmp; we're both victims."2e

Nevertheless with all my shength I ¡efrxe to acceptthat amputation. I feel in myself a soul as immense asthe world, truly a soul as deep as the deepest of rivers,my chest has the power to expand without limit. I ama master and I am advÍsed to adopt the humility of thecripple. Yesterday, awakening to the world, I saw theslsy turn upon itself utterþ and wholly. I wanted to rise,but the disemboweled silence fell back upon me, its wingsparalyzed. Without responsibility, sbaddl;ng lrJethíngpessand krffniry I began to weEr.

28. By Cbester Himes (Ganlen City, Doubleda¡ 1945).29. Hort¿ of tle Braoe.

Chapter Six

THE NEGROAI.ID PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

Psychoanalytic schools have studied tle neurotic re-actions that a¡ise among certain groups, in certain areàsof civilization. In response to the requirements of día-lectiq one should investigate the extent to which theconclusions of Freud or of ,{dler can be applied to theefiort to understand the man of color's view of the world.

It can never be sufrciently emphasized that psycho-analysis sets as its task the r¡nderstanding of given be-havior patterns-within the speciffc group represented bythe family. When the problem is a neurosÍs experienced byan adult, the analystt task is to uncover in the new psychicsEuctu¡e an analogy with certain infantile elements, arepetition, a duplication of conflicts that owe their originto tle essence of the f"*ily constellation. In every casethe analyst clings to the concept of the family as aþsychic circu:nstance and objecL'a

Here, however, the evidence is going to be partícularlycomplicated. In Europe the family represents in effect acertain fashion in which the world presents itself to thechild. There a¡e close connections between the shr¡ctureof the family and the structure of the natíon. Milita¡iza-

l. Jacques Lacan, Le complexe, facteur concret de la psycholo$e faniliale," Ercgclopéilie frcnçakn, &40, 5-

L4L