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What Fanon Said: a Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought

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What Fanon Said: a Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought WHAT FANON SAID FF6601.indb6601.indb i 22/11/15/11/15 11:48:27:48:27 PPMM FF6601.indb6601.indb iiii 22/11/15/11/15 11:48:27:48:27 PPMM just ideas transformative ideals of justice in ethical and political thought series editors Drucilla Cornell Roger Berkowitz FF6601.indb6601.indb iiiiii 22/11/15/11/15 11:48:27:48:27 PPMM FF6601.indb6601.indb iivv 22/11/15/11/15 11:48:27:48:27 PPMM WHAT FANON SAID A PHILOSOPHICAL INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND THOUGHT Lewis R. Gordon fordham university press new york 2015 FF6601.indb6601.indb v 22/11/15/11/15 11:48:27:48:27 PPMM Copyright © 2015 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Visit us online at www.fordhampress.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available online at catalog.loc.gov. Printed in the United States of America 17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1 First edition FF6601.indb6601.indb vvii 22/11/15/11/15 11:48:27:48:27 PPMM To Jane FF6601.indb6601.indb vviiii 22/11/15/11/15 11:48:27:48:27 PPMM FF6601.indb6601.indb vviiiiii 22/11/15/11/15 11:48:27:48:27 PPMM Contents Foreword by Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun xi Preface xvii Introduction: On What a Great Th inker Said 1 1 “I Am from Martinique” 8 2 Writing through the Zone of Nonbeing 19 3 Living Experience, Embodying Possibility 47 4 Revolutionary Th erapy 75 5 Counseling the Damned 106 Conclusion: Requiem for the Messenger 135 Afterword by Drucilla Cornell 143 Notes 149 Index 177 FF6601.indb6601.indb iixx 22/11/15/11/15 11:48:27:48:27 PPMM FF6601.indb6601.indb x 22/11/15/11/15 11:48:27:48:27 PPMM Foreword Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun More than fi fty years after his death, Frantz Fanon still ignites violent pas- sions. Th is “outlaw thinker,” as Lewis Gordon calls him, has become an object either of worship or a mixture of hatred and fear, especially in France, where he is not yet completely accepted as an author legitimately to be read and discussed in academic circles. Leftists do quote him or, more often, mention his name, but they rarely do so with any proper knowledge of his works. In their minds he plays the role of a francophone Che Guevara, an antiracist, anticolonialist advocate of an old-fashioned third-worldist and antimondialist politics. For others, he represents nothing but a past revolu- tionary theory that apologizes for violence and is, because of that, unaccept- able in a world where only the powerful can overtly use (extreme) violence and be highly praised. Che Guevara could have been rejected for the same reasons. But it is not the case. Th ere is a romantic representation of Che who, in some way, became a sort of popular hero, represented on posters in teenagers’ rooms or on mugs and T-shirts, but whom nearly nobody reads anymore. Both were doctors; both were deeply involved in revolutionary movements; both died very young and attractive in tragic circumstances where the CIA probably took an active part. But one of them was, notwith- standing his youth, one of the most original thinkers of his century, maybe the most original thinker—a sort of Mozart of thought, and he was black. Of course, I am speaking of Fanon. Gordon reminds us that the hegemonic view is that theory is supposed to be left to white theorists (I shall add: better if they are male). Blacks are FF6601.indb6601.indb xxii 22/11/15/11/15 11:48:27:48:27 PPMM xii Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun supposed to off er only their “experience,” or to be followers and imitators, in other words to put a white mask on their black faces. But the experience of a black man or woman is literally not taken as a human experience, able to be universalized, because in the racial and colonial point of view, black people are not structurally regarded as human beings. In France where the use of the word “race” is prohibited if it applies to human beings, where a 1991 law prohibits all sorts of discriminations, African artists and crafts- men, from ten to fi fty years old, coming from Ivory Coast were, not so long ago, exhibited in a large zoological park, as a part of an African safari. Th is exhibition took place in 1994. Black African musicians had to give shows, without being paid (they were supposed to be rewarded in their local money when they went home), and the children used in the exhibit were not sent to school. Th ey were all housed in awful conditions, without even proper beds. Th ey could not go anywhere because their passports had been taken from them and locked in the zoo owner’s safe, and they were under constant threat. Th e craftsmen, who lived in the same miserable conditions, were put together and exhibited in an “African village,” called Bamboula. Bamboula is supposed to be the name of an African musical instrument and a form of dance. But at that time it was also the name of a cookie topped with choco- late and sold in a box decorated with the picture of an ape-like little “ne- gro.” Something like the famous Banania cereal slogan “Y’a bon Banania,” which Gordon discusses in the third chapter of this book. Th e cookies were produced not far from the zoo (in the western part of France, near Nantes, which was one of the main centers of the transatlantic slave trade). Th e owner of the zoo had political and economic support for his show, which was supposed to draw many visitors in the region, interested in these living creatures from Africa. Th e intervention of trade unionists and grassroots associations, followed by a press campaign, succeeded in putting an end to this spectacle. And, after protests and public complaints, Bamboula cookies were sold under another name, and with another picture on the box. Th is story is very revealing. It shows how antiblack racism, with all its specifi cities (blackness being here associated in the social unconscious with animality), is still present in France, despite all the offi cial political correct- ness. So we urgently have to read what Fanon really said. But still there are people to fi ght this type of racism. And that is something for which to be grateful to Fanon, even if Black Skin, White Masks is not at all a plain de- nunciation of racism among others. It is a descent into hell and a road out of hell, where Fanon, who experienced collapsing into the zone of nonbeing FF6601.indb6601.indb xxiiii 22/11/15/11/15 11:48:27:48:27 PPMM Foreword xiii and exploding, asserts his full humanity through producing his theory, the theory issued from this experience and deeply rooted in it. Black Skin, White Masks is not only a tale rich with profound critique, where all the literary genres are mixed, but also a completely new theorization, where thought is originated from a sexed, colored, and colonized suff ering body. It is the body of a man who knows what hell means and who will devote all of his short life to those whom he called “the damned.” Ancient literature, including Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid, has taught us the necessity of a journey through hell before facing light, life, love, and action. Sigmund Freud, who opened his Interpretation of Dreams with a quotation from Virgil: “Flectere si nequeo Superos, Acheronta movebo,” doesn’t tell anything else. And Fanon was, according to Edward Said, “surely [Freud’s] most disputatious heir.” Th e verse of the Aeneid was also the motto of Ferdinand Lassalle, the nineteenth-century leader of the fi rst German workers’ party. Factories and mines looked so much like hell! In Black Skin, White Masks, theorization goes through this wandering through and out of hell, toward the height (or the light) of decolonial thought. In the famous Italian poem that seems to constitute the background of Lewis Gordon’s reading, we see everything through the eyes of Dante, who himself is guided by Virgil. Gordon’s book guides us in this extremely complex and enigmatic text and enables us to follow Fanon, whose words can’t then be considered as if they were just a contribution to some theoretical works among oth- ers. Fanon’s thought is not an addition to the stack of the productions of Western thought, with some special features: a “colored” writer, committed to an outdated anticolonial cause. Black Skin, White Masks is at the same time a gap and a bridge. As Gordon writes, “A new type of text was born.” But this text resonates with human culture, and it is a major contribution to the building of this humanity to come, this humanity for which we are still struggling and waiting.
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