7/2/25
Race, Writing and Decolonization - Lecture 4 - Dr Nicholas Ray
Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
Biography:
● Born in 1925 in Martinique, a French colony
● Taught by Aimé Césaire (Negritude). Helps to politicise him.
● The book published was effectively his qualifying dissertation for his medical studies.
● 1953-1956, Fanon moved to Algeria (another French colony). Anti-colonial struggle
begins and identifies with the struggle for independence.
● Fanon resigned from psychiatric role in Algeria. Fanon argued that the patients were
expected to be treated because their madness made them alien, ostracised from
reality. However, they have been driven mad because the alienation in the colony on
the French island has isolated them, driving them mad.
Sociogeny / The sociogenic
‘We shall see that the alienation of the black man [sic.] is not an individual question.
Alongside phylogeny [i.e. causation of illness based in heredity] and ontogeny [i.e. causation
of illness based in individual constitution] there is also sociogeny’.
Chapter 5, The Lived Experience of the Black Man:
● Psychological dimension of living with systemic anti-black racism.
● Speaks from the first person - speaks from his own experience.
● ‘l’homme noir’ - the Black man = speaks from male-centred position. Heterosexual
and a bit homophobic.
● ‘Maman, look a Negro! … I’m scared!’ (A child about Fanon).
● ‘I discovered my blackness’.
● ‘peeling, stripping my skin, causing a haemorrhage that left congealed black blood all
over my body’.
● ‘the white gaze, the only one dissecting me’.
● First time he sees himself being seen through the white European gaze. He realises
for the first time what he is for the other.
Chapter 6:
● Subject formation - the process by which we develop a sense of self, a sense of
being an ‘I’ in relation to others.
● Identification - key term in Black Skin, White Masks’.
● ‘Cultural imposition’ Education - taught that he was French - ‘our ancestors the
Gauls’. Encouraged to think of themselves as ethnically French.
● Popular culture - identified with the white hero. Stories and illustrated comics: ‘written
by white men for white children… In [them] the Wolf, the Devil, the Wicked Genie,
Evil and the Savage are always represented by Blacks or Indians’.
Race, Writing and Decolonization - Lecture 4 - Dr Nicholas Ray
Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
Biography:
● Born in 1925 in Martinique, a French colony
● Taught by Aimé Césaire (Negritude). Helps to politicise him.
● The book published was effectively his qualifying dissertation for his medical studies.
● 1953-1956, Fanon moved to Algeria (another French colony). Anti-colonial struggle
begins and identifies with the struggle for independence.
● Fanon resigned from psychiatric role in Algeria. Fanon argued that the patients were
expected to be treated because their madness made them alien, ostracised from
reality. However, they have been driven mad because the alienation in the colony on
the French island has isolated them, driving them mad.
Sociogeny / The sociogenic
‘We shall see that the alienation of the black man [sic.] is not an individual question.
Alongside phylogeny [i.e. causation of illness based in heredity] and ontogeny [i.e. causation
of illness based in individual constitution] there is also sociogeny’.
Chapter 5, The Lived Experience of the Black Man:
● Psychological dimension of living with systemic anti-black racism.
● Speaks from the first person - speaks from his own experience.
● ‘l’homme noir’ - the Black man = speaks from male-centred position. Heterosexual
and a bit homophobic.
● ‘Maman, look a Negro! … I’m scared!’ (A child about Fanon).
● ‘I discovered my blackness’.
● ‘peeling, stripping my skin, causing a haemorrhage that left congealed black blood all
over my body’.
● ‘the white gaze, the only one dissecting me’.
● First time he sees himself being seen through the white European gaze. He realises
for the first time what he is for the other.
Chapter 6:
● Subject formation - the process by which we develop a sense of self, a sense of
being an ‘I’ in relation to others.
● Identification - key term in Black Skin, White Masks’.
● ‘Cultural imposition’ Education - taught that he was French - ‘our ancestors the
Gauls’. Encouraged to think of themselves as ethnically French.
● Popular culture - identified with the white hero. Stories and illustrated comics: ‘written
by white men for white children… In [them] the Wolf, the Devil, the Wicked Genie,
Evil and the Savage are always represented by Blacks or Indians’.
