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IN'I'ERIOR COLONIES:
FRANTZ FANON AND THE
POLITICS OF IDENTI'IFICATIO
DIANAFUSS
Imperial Subjects
I would like to thankJudith Butler, Eduardo Cadava, Eric Santner,and especially Carole-Anne
Tylerfor their commentson an earlier draft of this essay.
1. Later in this chapterI discuss morefully Fanon 'sproblematicuse of the masculineas both
thepoint of departureand thefinal referentfor a new theoryof the subject. Suffice it to say here
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is a ratherdifferent reading of alterity in Fanon's work with potentially even greater
importfor ananticolonialistpolitics. Inthissecondtheoryof white-blackrelations,Fanon
implicitly disputes his own initial formulationof racial alterity and asks whether, in
colonial regimes of representation,even othernessmay be appropriatedexclusively by
white subjects. Fanon considers the possibility thatcolonialism may inflict its greatest
psychical violence precisely by attemptingto exclude blacks from the very self-other
dynamic that makes subjectivity possible. This alternative theory of (non)alterity
elaboratedin Black Skin, WhiteMasks does not so much call into question the first as
uncoveranother,deeper, more insidious level of orientalism.
Fanonproposesthatin the system of power-knowledgethatupholdscolonialism, it
is the white man who lays claim to the category of the Other, the white man who
monopolizesothernessto securean illusion of unfetteredaccess to subjectivity. Deploy-
ing the conventionalpsychoanalyticgrammarof "the other"and "the Other"to distin-
guish between imaginaryand symbolic difference, or between primaryand secondary
identification,2Fanon implies that the black man under colonial rule finds himself
relegatedto a position other than the Other. Colonialismworks in partby policing the
boundariesof culturalintelligibility,legislatingandregulatingwhich identitiesattainfull
cultural signification and which do not. For the black man, the implications of his
exclusion from the culturalfield of symbolizationare immediate and devastating. If
psychoanalysisis rightto claim that"Iis an Other"[Lacan23], thenothernessconstitutes
the very entry into subjectivity;subjectivity names the detour throughthe Other that
providesaccess to a fictive sense of self. Space operatesas one of the chief signifiersof
racialdifferencehere: undercolonial rule,freedomof movement (psychical and social)
becomes a white prerogative. Forced to occupy, in a white racial phantasm,the static
ontologicalspace of the timeless "primitive,"theblackmanis disenfranchisedof his very
subjectivity. Denied entryinto the alteritythatunderwritessubjectivity,the black man,
Fanon implies, is sealed instead into a "crushingobjecthood."Black may be a protean
imaginaryotherfor white, butfor itself it is a stationary"object";objecthood,substituting
for truealterity,blocks the migrationthroughthe Othernecessaryfor subjectivityto take
place. Throughthe violence of racialinterpellation-"'Dirty nigger!' Orsimply, 'Look,
a Negro!"'-Fanon finds himself becoming neitheran "I"nor a "not-I"but simply "an
object in the midst of otherobjects": "the movements,the attitudes,the glances of the
otherfixed me there, in the sense in which a chemical solution is fixed by a dye" [Black
109]. Strickenand immobilizedby a white child's phobically chargedcry, "Mama,see
the Negro! I'm frightened!,"Fanon's very body strains, fragments, and finally bursts
apart:"I took myself off from my own presence,far indeed, and made myself an object.
Whatelse could it be for me but an amputation,an excision, a hemorrhagethatspattered
my whole body with black blood?" [112]. "Fixed" by the violence of the racist
interpellationin an imaginaryrelation of fracturedspecularity, the black man, Fanon
that Fanon's powerful anticolonial polemics remain completely caught up in the masculinist
presuppositionsof the discourse they seek to displace.
2. In Lacanian terms,these two conceptscan be distinguishedin at least three ways: first, the
other (small o) denotes a specular relation to an Imaginaryrival, while the Other (capital O)
designates a linguistic relation to a Symbolic interlocutor;second, the other depends upon a
narcissistic relation, while the Other marks the locus of intersubjectivity;and third, the other is
produced as an effect of primary identificationin which the subject recognizes itself in its own
image, while the Other is constructedas an effect of secondary identificationin which the subject
shifts its point of address to another speaking subject. For a much fuller discussion of the
psychoanalyticdefinitionofalterity, see Boons-Grafe. For a deconstructionof thepsychoanalytic
distinctionbetweenprimaryand secondary identification,and its normativeapplications,see my
"Freud'sFallen Women."
White
22
constructdesignedto upholdandto consolidateimperialistdefinitionsof selfhood. Thus,
in Fanon's estimation, Sartre's theory of alterityfails on two counts. First, it fails to
registerhow, in colonial history,not all othersarethe same: "thoughSartre'sspeculations
on the existence of The Othermay be correct,"Fanonargues,"theirapplicationto a black
consciousnessprovesfallacious. Thatis becausethe white man is not only The Otherbut
also the master"[138]. Second, Sartre'sdeploymentof a Self/Otherdialecticsfails to see
how the Otherwho is masteris firmly located in an economy of the Same. In a colonial
dialectics,basedon a radicalasymmetryof power,symbolic alterityoperatesprecisely as
a privilege of the Self-Same.6
The problem originateswith the Hegelian dialectic, which, as Robert Young has
recently observed, is modeled upon Enlightenmenthistory. As a form of knowledge
baseduponincorporation,Hegel's philosophicaltheoryof self-otherrelations"simulates
the project of nineteenth-centuryimperialism . . . mimics at a conceptual level the
geographicalandeconomic absorptionof the non-Europeanworld by the West" [Young
3]. Both the existentialist and the psychoanalyticnotions of otherness, which Fanon
inheritsfromSartreandFreudrespectively,operateon the Hegelianprincipleof negation
and incorporation. The colonial-imperialregisterof self-other relationsis particularly
strikingin Freud'swork, where the psychoanalyticformulationof identificationcan be
seen to locate at the very level of the unconsciousthe imperialistact of assimilationthat
drivesEurope'svoraciouscolonialist appetite. Identification,in otherwords, is itself an
imperial process, a form of violent appropriationin which the Other is deposed and
assimilatedinto the lordlydomainof Self. Througha psychical process of colonization,
the imperialsubjectbuilds an Empireof the Same and installs at its center a tyrannical
dictator,"His Majestythe Ego."
Whathappenswhen imperialsubjectsbecome ImperialSubjects?When Otherness,
and thus subjectivity,is claimed as a prerogativeof the colonizer alone? For Fanon,the
answeris clear: when subjectivitybecomes the exclusive propertyof "the master,"the
colonizer can claim a sovereign right to personhoodby purchasinginteriorityover and
against the representationof the colonial other as pure exteriority. This is the elusive
meaning of Fanon's enigmatic phrase "the Umwelt of Martinique"[37], one of many
referencesinBlackSkin,WhiteMasksto Lacan's1949 paperon themirrorstage, in which
the function of the mirroris said "to establish a relationbetween the organism and its
reality ... between the Innenweltand the Umwelt"[Lacan4]. But if Martiniqueis the
Umwelt to Europe's Innenwelt, if the colonized is no more than a narcissistic self-
reflectionof the colonizer, then the latter'sexclusive claim to "humanness"is seriously
compromised,put intojeopardyby the very narcissismthatparadoxicallyconstructsthe
nonhumanin the Imperial Subject's own image. Moreover, by imposing upon the
colonial other the burdenof identification(the command to become a mimic Anglo-
European),the ImperialSubject inadvertentlyplaces himself in the perilous position of
object-object of the Other's aggressive, hostile, and rivalrousacts of incorporation.
It thereforebecomes necessary for the colonizer to subject the colonial other to a
doublecommand:be like me, don't be like me; be mimeticallyidentical,be totally other.
The colonial other is situated somewhere between difference and similitude, at the
vanishingpointof subjectivity. Of course,the samedialecticof differenceandsimilitude
6. I should clarify here that Fanon's profound discomfort with Sartre's endorsementof
negritudein Orph6enoir is provokednot by Sartre's use of the dialecticper se but by the specific
place that negritude is made to occupy within it. Sartre's dialectic of thesis (white racism),
antithesis(negritude),and synthesis (humanism)assigns "black"to the role of negation in what
is essentially,for Fanon, a dialectics of racial assimilationism.See Sartre,Orpheenoir. Theworks
ofAime Cesaire,LeopoldSenghor,andLeon Damas,featured in the negritudeanthologyprefaced
by Orph6enoir,provideFanon withan alternativephilosophical andpoliticalposition from which
to critiqueSartre's controversialintroduction.
7. This theoryof subversivemimicryfinds its most extended treatmentin the work of Luce
Irigaray. See Irigaray's This Sex Which Is Not One. Carole-AnneTyler'sFemaleImpersonators
offers a careful and thorough critique of the problems with Irigaray's mimicry/masquerade
distinctionas it falters on the twingrounds of intentionand reception.
8. Bhabha,whoseworkcenterson investigatingtheplace offantasyanddesire in theexercise
of colonial power, is one of the first cultural theorists to think through the ambivalences of
identificationin termsof its inscriptionin colonial history.Bhabha's mostinfluentialessays all take
Fanon as theirtheoreticalpointof departure.In additionto "OfMimicryandMan,"see also "The
OtherQuestion," "SlyCivility," "SignsTakenfor Wonders,""RememberingFanon, "Interro-
gating Identity," and "'Race,' Timeand the Revision of Modernity."
24
place. The demandof authoritycannotunify its messages norsimply identifyits subjects"
["Remembering" xxii]. Bhabha'spoint,simplyput,is thattheproductionof mimic others
can proveto be disruptivein ways colonial discoursedoes not intendandcannotpossibly
control.
If the mimicry of subjugationcan provide unexpectedopportunitiesfor resistance
anddisruption,the mimicryof subversioncan find itself reinforcingconventionalpower
relationsratherthanerodingthem. This is the conclusion of several recentstudies on a
formof racialcross-identificationthatFanondoes notdiscuss inBlackSkin,WhiteMasks,
namely the subject position of white skin, black masks, or whites in black face.9 In a
readingof racialfetishismandthe homoeroticimaginary,KobenaMercerasks: "whatis
going on when whites assimilateand introjectthe degradedanddevalorizedsignifiers of
racialothernessinto the culturalconstructionof theirown identity?If imitationimplies
identification,in thepsychoanalyticsense of theword,thenwhatis it aboutwhitenessthat
makesthe white subjectwantto be black?"["Skin"21]. KajaSilverman,in her analysis
of Lawrenceof Arabia,providesa possible answerwith hertheoryof the doublemimesis.
While, on the one hand,T. E. Lawrence's adoptionof Arab dress and custom promoted
an unorthodoxhomoeroticidentificationwith Arabnationals,on the otherhand,the very
same culturalimpersonationmaskeda will-to-power,a desire to outdothe Arabsin their
"Arabness,"an ambitionto become moretrulyotherthanthe Other[17-20]. Gail Ching-
LiangLow expresses a similarconcernwhen she speculateson whether,for the colonial
subject,"theprimaryattractionof thecross-culturaldressis thepromiseof 'transgressive'
pleasure without the penalties of actual change" [93]. Keeping in mind the power
relationsinvolved, theremay be little if anythingsubversivein cross-culturalimperson-
ations that work in the service of colonial imperialism. When we take into account
multiple axes of difference that cross-cut, interferewith, and mutuallyconstitute each
other,the dreamof a playfulmimesis cannotbe so easily or immediatelyrecuperatedfor
a progressivepolitics. Given the various and continuallychanging culturalcoordinates
thatlocate identityat the site of bothfantasyandpower,one would have to acknowledge,
at the very least, that the same mimetic act can be disruptiveand reversionaryat once.
Folded into one another,these two notions of mimicrytogethersuggest thatcontext
is decisive in registeringthe full rangeof political meaningsone might attributeto even
a single identification.Thedeceptivelysimpledetailsof who is imitatingwhom andunder
what conditions stand as the most insistent, intricate,and indispensablequestions for a
politics of mimesis. The projectof evaluatingthe political effects of mimesis encounters
furthercomplicationswhen we consider the ways in which "imitationrepeatedlyveers
over into identification"[Silverman 19]. Psychoanalytictheories of identificationall
seem to agree that "everyimitation... is also an incorporation"[Lacoue-Labartheand
Nancy, "Unconscious"208]. In the next section I would like to examine at least one
instancein Fanon's work where this premise does not appearto hold true,one scene of
mimesis that draws its power from a certain refusal of identification. Tentatively
unfasteningimpersonationfrom identification,I propose to demonstratehow mimesis
might actuallybe deployedto countera prescribedidentification. When situatedwithin
the context of colonial politics, the psychoanalytic assumption that every conscious
imitationconceals anunconsciousidentificationneedsto be carefullyquestioned,readfor
the signs of its own colonizing impulses.
The wearing of the veil throughoutthe period of the French occupation of Algeria
provides Fanonwith one of his most importantexamples of the role of mimesis in the
psychopathologyof colonial relations. In the opening essay of A Dying Colonialism,
entitled "Algeria Unveiled," Fanon examines the mutable and contradictorycultural
meaningsattributedto Arabwomen's dress,whathe suggestivelydenotesas "thehistoric
dynamismof the veil" [Dying 63]. For the Europeanoccupiers,the veil functionsas an
exotic signifier, invested with all the propertiesof a sexual fetish. Faced with a veiled
Algerianwoman, Fanonwrites, the Europeanis consumedwith a desire to see, a desire
that,in colonialism's highly sexualizedeconomy of looking, also operatesas an urge for
violent possession:
The colonialist desire to unveil the Algerian woman is given special urgency by the
capabilityof the veil to block the look of the Otherwhile permittingthe woman herself
to assume the privilege of the ImperialSubject-to see withoutbeing seen [44]. Fanon
reads the French colonial political programof "unveiling"as an attemptto strip all
Algerians of their national, cultural, and religious identity by reducing the Algerian
woman to a sexual representationmore readilyassimilatedto white Europeanideals of
womanhood. In direct opposition to the signification of the veil for the French
colonialists, the veil comes to function for the colonized as a visible sign of Algerian
nationalist identity and a symbol of resistance to imperial penetrationand colonial
domination. Each attempt to Europeanize the Algerian woman is countered by a
reinvestmentof the veil with national import. Even more importantlyfor Fanon, the
wearingof theveil operatesas one of themostvisible anddramaticindicesto thehistorical
emergence of women's political agency: "the Algerian women who had long since
droppedtheveil once againdonnedthehaik,thusaffirmingthatit was nottruethatwoman
liberatedherself at the invitationof Franceand of Generalde Gaulle"[62].
Yet as MervatHatemremindsus, revolutionarycalls for the reassumptionof the veil
may have quite othermotivationsduringtimes of severe economic hardshipbroughton
by the colonial wars: the veil, and the exclusion of women fromthe public spherethatit
signifies, upholdsa traditionalsexualdivisionof laborandpreservesfor men increasingly
scarcejobs in the workplace [31].10 Within a single discourse the veil can thus signify
26
doubly, as a mode of defying colonialism and as a means of ensuring patriarchal
privilege." Conversely,theveil can carrya similarmeaningacrossseemingly antithetical
discourses: in the discourse of colonial imperialismand in the discourse of national
resistance,the veiled Algerian woman standsin metonymicallyfor the nation. In both
instances,the woman's body is the contestedideologicalbattleground,overburdenedand
saturatedwith meaning. It is the woman who circulatesas a fetish-both the site of a
receding, endangerednationalidentity and the guarantorof its continuedvisibility. In
Fanon's "AlgeriaUnveiled,"the wearerof the veil becomes a veil, the inscrutableface
of a nation struggling to maintain its cultural inviolability. A fetishistic logic of
displacementoperatesin Fanon's own text, as the veiled Algerianwoman comes to bear
the burdenof representingnationalidentityin the absence of nation.
Fanonextends this logic of fetishizationto includethe unveiledAlgerianwoman as
well. His argumentrestson a paradoxof unveiling: if some Algerianwomen duringthe
war have begun to dress in European clothes, this act of cultural cross-dressing is
testimony not to the success of the relentless European attempts at psychological
conversion and deculturationbut to their failure; these women, enlisted by the FLN,
unveil themselves only in orderto betterdisguise themselves. "Passing"as European,
Algerian women can move freely throughthe Europeanquartersof the city, carrying
concealedguns, grenades,ammunition,money, papers,andeven explosives. ForFanon,
this kindof nationalpassing in the service of revolutionaryactivity is never a questionof
imitation:
28
For Fanon it is politically imperativeto insist upon an instrumentaldifferencebetween
imitationandidentification,becauseit is preciselypolitics thatemerges in the dislocated
space between them.'3
It is because the French colonialists did not understandthe difference between
identificationand imitationthattheirown deploymentof a politics of mimesis failed as
spectacularlyas the Algerians'succeeded. In TheWretchedof theEarthFanondiscusses
the colonialist practiceof intering leading Algerian male intellectualsand submitting
themto prolongedsessions of brainwashing,a strategydesigned"toattackfromthe inside
those elements which constitutenationalconsciousness" [Wretched286]. The details
Fanonprovidesof the"pathologyof torture"show how thisparticularformof psychologi-
cal abuse aspires to nothing less than the forcible realignment of identifications achieved
througha programof strictlymonitoredimitations: duringthe psychological "conver-
sion" process, the intellectualis orderedto "play the part"of collaborator;his waking
hours are spent in continuous intellectual disputation, arguing the merits of French
colonization and the evils of Algeriannationalism;he is never left alone, for solitude is
considereda rebelliousact;andhe must do all his thinkingaloud, since silence is strictly
forbidden[286-87]. Ultimately,the native intellectual'slife dependsuponhis abilityto
imitatethe Otherperfectly,withouta traceof parody;it depends,in short,uponhis ability
to mime without the perception of mimicry. Once again, mimicry must pass as
masqueradeif the subjectwho performsthe impersonationis to survive to tell the tale.
This type of tortureis perhapsonly the most extremeform of what Bhabhahas described
as theprimarymode of subjectificationundercolonial domination:"agrotesquemimicry
or 'doubling' that threatensto split the soul" ["Other"27]. Yet this violent attemptto
producean identification(what psychoanalysiscalls an "identificationwith the aggres-
sor")fails "tosplitthe soul,"andit fails becauseimitationalone is notsufficientto produce
an identification. Those internedsubjectsreleasedafter"successful completion"of the
conversionprogram,Fanontells us, all returnedto theircommunitiesand took up, once
again, their respective roles in Algeria's strugglefor nationalliberation.
This is not to say, however, that the male revolutionariesFanon describes in The
Wretchedof the Earth, forced to imitatethe ideology, speech, and mannerismsof their
Europeancaptors,were not left unscarredby the process. Indeed,as early as Black Skin,
WhiteMasks, Fanonis concernedwith the profoundlydebilitatingpsychological effects
of colonial mimesis on all blackmen who mustlaborunderthe brutalcolonial injunction
to become (in Bhabha's eloquent turn of phrase) "almost the same but not white"
["Mimicry"130]. Forthe black man, mimesis is a by-productof the colonial encounter,
a pathology createdby the materialconditions of imperialdomination,a psychological
"complex" that at all points must be refused and resisted.'4 If we compare Fanon's
discussionof blackmen inBlackSkin,WhiteMasksto his laterdiscussionof blackwomen
in "AlgeriaUnveiled,"we detecta dubiousgenderincongruitystructuringFanon'stheory
of colonial mimicry: whereas colonial mimicry for black men is alienating and
depersonalizing,for black women it is naturaland instinctive. In Fanon's view, black
women are essentially mimics and black men are essentially not. Fanon's analysis of
13. Fanon does not get awayfrom theproblem of intentionalityhere; indeed,Fanon's point
is thatpoliticsnecessarilyresidesin intentionality.Fanon 'sstrategyis to reconstructthepossibility
of agency that colonialism vitiates, and he does this by locating "politics" in the space where
imitationexceeds identification.
14. Theclearest statementofFanon 's view thatidentificationitself is a pathological condition
producedby the colonial relationcomesin Black Skin, WhiteMasks,whereFanon suggests, again
using Sartreanterms, that "as long as the black man is among his own, he will have no occasion
... to experiencehis being throughothers" [109]. For Fanon it is not the case that unconscious
racial identificationscreatethecolonial driveforassimilation,butratherthatcolonialdominations
produce thephenomenonof racial identification. No identificationwithoutcolonization.
Decolonizing Sexuality
30
object,"16Fanon widens the field of the clinical disorderby explaining that the phobic
object need not be presentin actualitybut need only exist as a possibility in the mind of
the subject[154]. In a readingof the fantasy"A Negro is rapingme"(thechapter'scentral
exampleof Negrophobia)Fanonidentifiesthe phobiaas a disguised expressionof sexual
desire: "when a woman lives the fantasy of rape by a Negro, it is in some way the
fulfillmentof a privatedream,of an innerwish.... [I]t is the woman who rapesherself."
How can it be said thatthe Negrophobicwoman rapesherself? Like Freud'shysteric,17
Fanon'sphobiccan apparentlyoccupy in fantasytwo or morepositions at once. Through
a cross-genderedand cross-racialidentification,the white Negrophobicwoman usurps
the positionshe herselfhas assignedto the blackmanandplays the role notonly of victim
but of aggressor: "Iwish the Negro would rip me open as I would have rippeda woman
open"[179]. ForFanon,thewhite woman's fantasy"A Negro is rapingme"is ultimately
an expression of either a violent lesbian desire or a wish for self-mutilation, with
narcissismultimatelyblurringthedistinctionbetweenthem. Even morequestionable,the
desire to be a rapist is posited as the basis of the desire to be raped, a masochistic
identificationthatFanonunproblematically takesas one of thedefiningpsychopathologies
of white femininity. It is, however, importantto recall at this juncture that Fanon
elaborateshis readingof this particularfantasyduringa periodwhen fabricatedcharges
of rapewere used as powerfulcolonial instrumentsof fear and intimidationagainstblack
men. Fanon's deeply troublingcomments on white women and rape are formulated
within a historical context in which the phobically charged stereotype of the violent,
lawless, and oversexed Negro put all black men at perpetualrisk. Whatwe might call
Fanon's myth of white women's rape fantasies is offered as a counternarrativeto "the
myth of the black rapist"[see Davis].
Ultimately,what may be most worrisomeaboutthe treatmentof interracialrape in
Black Skin, WhiteMasks is not what Fanon says aboutwhite women andblack men but
what he does not say aboutblack women and white men. As MaryAnn Doane notes in
her readingof Fanon's analysis of rape and miscegenation,
32
Yet, like Fanon's theoryof white femininity,his complicatedreadingof homosexu-
ality needs to be framedhistorically,placed within the prism of the particularcolonial
history that shapes and legislates it. Fanon's concern with the economics of sexual
exchange between colonizer and colonized is not entirely withoutwarrant;prostitution
was indeedone of the few occupationsopen to black immigrantsin colonial France. The
point needs to be made that colonialism's insatiabledesire for exotic black bodies, its
institutionalizationof a system of sexual exploitation that focused largely on black
women, was extendedto include many black men as well. Moreover,Fanon's effort to
call into question the universalityof the Oedipuscomplex may constitutewhat is most
revolutionaryabout his theoreticalwork, a political interventioninto classical psycho-
analysis of enormousimportfor latertheoristsof race and sexuality. Respondingto an
allusion by Lacanto the "abundance"of the Oedipuscomplex, Fanonshows insteadthe
limitations of Oedipus, or ratherthe ideological role Oedipus plays as a limit in the
enculturatingsweep of colonial expansionism. Prone to see Oedipuseverywherethey
look, Western ethnologists are impelled to find their own psychosexual pathologies
duplicatedin theirobjects of study [152]. Undercolonialism, Oedipusis nothing if not
self-reproducing. Taking their cue in part from Fanon, two French theorists of the
metropole,Gilles Deleuze andFelix Guattari,unmaskoedipalityas a formof colonization
turnedinside out: "Oedipusis always colonization pursuedby other means, it is the
interiorcolony, and ... even here at home, where we Europeansare concerned,it is our
intimatecolonial relation"[170].21Deleuze andGuattari'sAnti-Oedipus, publishedin the
early 1970s during the watershed of
period publications on Fanon's work,22is as much a
the
polemic against psychology of colonization as it is a demystificationof the imperial
of
politics oedipalization, and indeed the greatinsight of this wildly ambitiousbook is its
demonstrationof how the historicalemergence of both colonizationand oedipalization
participatein a doubleideological operationwhere each serves effectively to conceal the
political function and purpose of the other. "Even in the case of worthy Oedipus,"
pronouncesAnti-Oedipus,"it was alreadya matterof 'politics"' [98].
Fanon's insistencethatthereis no homosexualityin the Antilles may convey a more
trenchant meaning than the one he in fact intended: if by "homosexuality"one
understandsthe culturally specific social formations of same-sex desire as they are
articulatedin the West, then indeed homosexualityis foreign to the Antilles. Is it really
possible to speak of "homosexuality,"or for thatmatter"heterosexuality"or "bisexual-
ity," as universal, global formations? Can one generalize from the particularforms
sexuality takes underWesterncapitalismto sexuality as such? Whatkinds of coloniza-
tions do such discursivetranslationsperformon "other"traditionsof sexual differences?
It is especially important,confronted by these problems, to focus attention on the
ethnocentrismof the epistemologicalcategoriesthemselves-European identitycatego-
ries that seem to me wholly inadequateto describe the many differentconsolidations,
permutations,and transformationsof what the West has come to understand,itself in
myriadand contradictoryfashion, underthe sign "sexuality."
Fanon's disavowal and repudiationof "homosexuality"take on special meaning in
light of the parallelthatpsychoanalysisdrawsbetween "perversion"and "primitivity."
This is not to say thatFanon's work is free of the specterof homophobia. When Fanon
confesses, "I have neverbeen able, withoutrevulsion,to heara man say of anotherman:
'He is so sensual!" [Black 201], the very form of the enunciationobeys the terms of
Fanon's own earlierdefinitionof phobia as "terrormixed with sexual revulsion"[155].
21. After all, "therevolutionaryis thefirst to have the right to say: 'Oedipus?' Never heard
of it" [Deleuze and Guattari96].
22. In additionto Gendzier'sbiography,several other critical studieson Fanon appeared in
the early 1970s. See Bouvier; Caute;Lucas; Woddis;Zahar; and Geismar.
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However, Fanon's disidentificationcan be read as anotherkind of refusal as well, a
rejectionof the "primitive= invert"equationthatmarksthe confluence of evolutionary
anthropologyand sexology and their combined influence on early twentieth-century
psychoanalysis.
Inversion,Freudcommentsin ThreeEssays on the Theoryof Sexuality,"is remark-
ably widespreadamong many savage and primitiveraces .. .; and, even amongst the
civilized peoples of Europe,climateandraceexercise the most powerfulinfluenceon the
prevalenceof inversion and upon the attitudeadoptedtowards it" [7: 139].23 In these
curiouslines linking inversionto race and climatology,Freudhas in mind the influential
theory of the "Sotadic Zone" developed in the final volume of RichardBurton's The
Arabian Nights. Burton's Sotadic Zone, a global mapping of inversion according to
certainlatitudesand longitudes, covers all the shores of the Mediterranean,including
NorthAfrica, and extends as far as the South Sea Islandsand the New World.24While
Burtondescribes his sexual topographyas "geographicaland climactic, not racial,"he
nonethelessfinds the incidenceof "Le Vice" to be highest amongstthe Turks("a race of
bornpederasts"[232]), the Chinese ("thechosen people of debauchery"[238]), and the
NorthAmericanIndians("sodomites"and"cannibals"[240]). The sexologist Havelock
Ellis, following Burton, also finds a "special proclivity to homosexuality ... among
certainracesand in certainregions"[Ellis 22]. ForBurtonandEllis, the category"race"
encompassesmorethansimply skincolor;for thesewriters"race"operatesas a somewhat
more elastic term folded into the category of nation ("the British race"), species ("the
humanrace"),and even gender ("themale or female race"). Not insignificantlyfor the
presentreadingof racializedsexualities, fin de siecle sexology routinelyrefers to "the
thirdsex" as a separateraceor species. In both Ellis's andBurton'sdiscourseof Empire,
Algeria is singled out as the most dangerous-because the most sexually infectious-of
the Sotadic Zones. Like a kind of venereal disease threateningthe moral health of an
Empire,homosexualityis said to be "contractedin Algeria"by membersof the French
ForeignLegion,"spread"throughentiremilitaryregiments,andfinally transmittedto the
civilian population[see Ellis 10; Burton251]. Throughwhat we might call an epidemi-
ology of sexuality, colonial discourse representsplaces like North Africa as breeding
grounds for immoralityand vice, thereby invertingand disguising the real traumaof
colonial imperialism: the introductionof highly infectious and devastatingly lethal
Europeandiseases into the colonies.
Fanon's theory of the sexual perversionscan thus be more fully understoodas an
impassioned response to popular colonialist theories of race and sexuality. Fanon's
23. Most of whatFreud has to say on race can be found in his anthropologicalwork,where
Gustave Le Bon's use of the phrase "racial unconscious" as a synonym for "archaic" or
"primitive"is revisedand expandedbyFreud to includehis theoryof repression. For Freud's most
extendedtreatmentof thesubjectof race, see TotemandTaboo(1913), 13:1-162. For theinfluence
of Darwin on Freud's theoryof race, see Edwin R. Wallace's Freudand Anthropology. Freud's
GroupPsychology andthe Analysis of the Ego (1921) provides us with a psychoanalytictheoryof
racismthatmaynot be withoutinterestin the contextof thepresentchapter: "Closelyrelatedraces
keep one another at arm's length; the South German cannot endure the North German, the
Englishmancasts everykindof aspersionupontheScot, theSpaniarddespises thePortuguese. We
are no longerastonishedthatgreaterdifferencesshouldlead to an almostinsuperablerepugnance,
such as the Gallicpeoplefeelfor the German,theAryanfor the Semite,and the whiteracesfor the
coloured"[18: 101]. See also Gilman.
24. Burton writes: "Thereexists whatI shall call a 'SotadicZone,' boundedwestwardsby
the northernshores of theMediterranean(N. Lat. 43?)and by the Southern(N. Lat. 30?). Thusthe
depth would be 780 to 800 miles including meridionalFrance, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and
Greece, with the coast-regions of Africafrom Marocco to Egypt" [206]. See Burton's Terminal
Essay for thefull coordinatesof the Sotadic Zone, too lengthyto be cited here.
Identificationin Translation
25. There is considerabledisagreementover the extent of Fanon's language skills and its
consequencesfor his professional work,a disputethat in the level of its intensityunderscoreshow
very high are the stakes involved. Fanon's most sympatheticbiographer,Peter Geismar,claims
that by the end of 1956, several years after arrivingin Algeria, Fanon could "understandmost of
36
points to be made on the subject of the translatorin Fanon's clinical practice. The first
is what is added to the analytic process: a heightened awareness of language as an
embattledsite of historicalstruggle and social contestation. Fanon's complete reliance
upon translatorsto converse with his Muslim patients is nothing if not a powerful
reminder,to both doctor and patient, of the immediate political context in which the
therapeuticdialogue strugglesto takeplace. The daily translationsof Arabicand Kabyle
into Frenchcould not avoid reproducing,within the space of the clinical treatment,the
very structureof the colonial relation. The second is what is lost in this translation:quite
simply, the analysand'sown speech, the speakingunconscious. Whatultimatelyescapes
Fanon are the slips and reversals,the substitutionsand mispronunciations,in short, the
freeassociationsthatprovidethe analystwith his most importantinterpretivematerial,the
traces and eruptionsof the patient's unconscious into language. Strictly speaking, the
speech Fanonanalyzesin the sessions with his Muslimpatientsis the translator's,not the
patient's,a situationthatimpossiblyconfuses the analyticprocess andurgentlyposes the
questionof whethera therapeuticmodel constructedin one languageor culturecan be so
easily or uncriticallytranslatedinto another.
Fanon's essay "The 'North African Syndrome,"'published in the February1952
issue of L 'esprit,gives us some indicationof the formidableproblemsposed by the use
of a translatorin colonial medicine. The following scene dramatizes,with wry humor,a
routinemedical examinationbetween a Frenchdoctor and a NorthAfrican patient:
what his patients were telling him" [86]. Irene Gendzierprovides a sharply differing account,
describing Fanon's efforts to learn Arabic as "stillborn"and personally anguishing [77]. For
AlbertMemmi,Fanon's refusal to learn the language of thepatients he was treating constituted
nothing less than a "psychiatricscandal" [5].
26. WalterBenjamin's "TheTaskof the Translator" takesas its thesis the useful notion that
any language is a place of exile, that "all translationis only a somewhatprovisionalway of coming
to termswith theforeignness of languages " [75]. Benjamin'sinterestin translation,however,lies
in the "suprahistoricalkinshipof languages" or "the relatedness of two languages, apart from
historical considerations" [74]. The theoretical move to banish history from the realm of
translation operates to conceal, and ultimately to preserve, a colonizing impulse at work in
translation;Benjamin's "greatmotif of integratingmany tongues into one true language" [77]
representsan imperialistdream,afantasy of linguisticincorporationand culturalassimilation. If
it is impossibleto read translationoutside the historyof colonial imperialism,then it may also be
the case that colonial imperialismoperates as a particular kindof translation. In the roundtable
discussion on translationincluded in Derrida's The Ear of the Other,Eugene Vanceposes the
questionin its simplestrhetoricalform: "Isn't the colonizationof theNew Worldbasically a form
of translation?" [137]. For more on the imperialhistory of translation,see Krupat193-200.
27. Complicatingmattersfurther is the question of Fanon as object of identification. In
"CriticalFanonism,"HenryLouis Gates,Jr., demonstrateshow Fanon is inevitablya repository
for his critic'sprojectiveidentifications: "IfSaid made of Fanon an advocateofpost-postmodern
counternarrativesof liberation;if [Abdul]JanMohamedmade of Fanon a Manicheantheoristof
colonialism as absolute negation; and if Bhabha cloned, from Fanon's theoria, another Third
Worldpost-structuralist,[Benita] Parry's Fanon ... turnsout to confirmher own ratheroptimistic
vision of literatureand social action" [465]. To this list I wouldhave to add myown identification
withFanon thepsychoanalytictheorist,practicing clinician, and universityteacher.
38
thatit was necessaryfor Fanon,afterthe publicationof his first book, Black Skin,White
Masks, to repudiate"psychoanalysis"to access "politics."Joch McCulloch's carefully
researchedstudyof Fanon'softenoverlookedclinicalwritingsmakesthecounterargument
that "thereis no epistemological or methodologicalbreakbetween Fanon's earlierand
later works" and that indeed "all of Fanon's works form part of a single theoretical
construct"[3].28Thecriticaldebateoverthe relationbetweenFanon'spsychiatrictraining
and his political education-posed in the oppositional terms of dramatic break or
seamless continuity-obscures the critical faultlines upon which Fanon's own work is
based, for Fanon himself was interested precisely in the linkages and fissures, the
contradictionsand coimplications, the translationsand transformationsof the theory-
politics relation.I havetriedto explorein this essay theway in which, in Fanon'sthinking,
the psychical and the political are hinged together on the point of identification. I am
remindedof the concludingline of PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe'sstudy of mimesis: "why
would the problem of identification not be, in general, the essential problem of the
political?"[Typography300].
Fanon'sown politics takes the multifariousform of an extendedinvestigationof the
psychopathologyof colonialismthatnotonly describesimperialpracticesbutalso, where
sexual differences are concerned, problematicallyenacts them. When addressingthe
politics of sexual identifications,Fanon fails to register fully the significance of the
foundingpremiseof his own theoryof colonial relations,which holds thatthe politicalis
locatedwithin the psychical as a powerfulshapingforce. I take this workingpremiseto
be one of Fanon'smost importantcontributionsto political thought-the criticalnotion
thatthepsychical operatesprecisely as a politicalformation. Fanon's work also draws
our attentionto the historicaland social conditions of identification. It remindsus that
identificationis never outside or priorto politics, that identificationis always inscribed
within a certainhistory: identificationnames not only the historyof the subjectbut the
subjectin history. WhatFanongives us, in the end, is a politics thatdoes not oppose the
psychical but fundamentallypresupposesit.
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