Social Physician: Treating Colonialism's Ills with Existentialism In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon examines the sickness

of colonialism. His patient is the black race (but ultimately it could be any oppressed people). He provides the readers a litany of symptoms, which reveal the extent and gravity of the illness: inferiority complex, alienation, lactification, and negrophobia. These are just some of the symptoms whose cause is the unequal power relationship engendered by the colonial milieu. All these symptoms manifest themselves unmistakably in the language, the intellect and the body of the colonized black race. However, not just satisfied with examining the illness colonialism induces in a colonized people, Fanon prescribes the therapy of Existential philosophy so that these oppressed people can regain the health of autonomy, self-determination and freedom. In the role of social psychologist, Fanon diagnoses and wants to treat the psychic maladies in the black race, resulting from colonization by white Europeans. Isolating the object of his diagnosis and treatment, Fanon writes, "[M]y purpose [...] is [to] help the black man to free himself of the arsenal of complexes that has been developed by the colonial environment" (30). The phrase "arsenal of complexes" is of particular import and deserves our attention. For the colonizer, the application of brute force as a means of subduing a colonized population is neither sustainable for a long duration nor economically expedient. Fanon avers that it is easier to conquer someone who conquers himself. Explaining the plight of the black man, Fanon states, After having been the slave of the white man, he enslaves himself (192). Subjugation is more effective and efficient through psychological means because the colonized race is taught to conquer itself. To colonize a race which actively assists in the process is much easier than to colonize one which stubbornly resists. Part of this participation in the process of colonization begins with internal strife: internal conflict between the members of the group being colonized and even internal conflict among the individuals of the group. The "arsenal of complexes" is the tool by which the white Europeans first inculcate the lessons of self-division. The "complexes" employed by the white colonizer to subdue the black race principally results in a person divided against himself. Fanon attests to the egregious effects of this "arsenal of complexes" when he writes, "A Negro behaves differently with a white man and with another Negro. That this self-division is a direct result of colonialist subjugation is beyond question" (17). "[S]elf-division" is used by the white colonizers so that the black man "enslaves himself" (192). Divided against himself, how can a man unite with others to overthrow his oppressor? Therefore, in fact, it has been "self-division" that contributed to "colonialist subjugation." Here, conflict within the individual leads to the downfall of the group. Finally, this "self-division" can often manifest itself in the complex of inferiority that the black man suffers in his preference for, and the status derived from, renunciation of indigenous culture for that of the European colonizer. The imprint of a colonizers culture on the local population usually first appears in the ascendancy of the European language over the native language. Illustrating this phenomenon, Fanon writes, "Every colonized peoplein other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation" (18). In the panoply of psychological complexes used to subdue a colonized people, perhaps that of the "inferiority complex" is most trenchant and detestable. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche states that "The noble soul has reverence for itself" (228). Yet this "reverence" for the self (and everything

derived from it) is the first quality undermined by colonizers. According to Fanon, the colonizers effect this devaluation of the self when they destroy the "local cultural originality" of the "colonized people." For Fanon, the "local cultural originality" extirpated by the colonizers is often foremost that of language. With the ascendancy of the colonizer's language as the dominant means of discourse between the oppressed and the oppressor, the "colonized people" cannot escape the truth of Fanon's assertion that "Mastery of language affords remarkable power" (18). Consequently, when "face to face with the language of the civilizing nation," the colonized people must adopt the language of power, which has been imposed on them, and reject the native language as something inferior by comparison. Though this assimilation of the power language of the colonizer may ostensibly be of benefit, it nonetheless has detrimental consequences, affecting the unity of the colonized population. Explaining how language becomes a source of division among the subjugated population, Fanon writes, "In any group of young men in the Antilles, the one who expresses himself well, who has mastered the language is inordinately feared; keep an eye on that one, he is almost white" (20-21). Here, the salient consequence of having "mastered the language" is one of isolation from the group. Not without reason, Fanon illustrates the divisive nature of assimilating to the linguistic hegemony of the colonizer. Under the strain of colonization, one who does so is not celebrated because of his felicity with language; rather, he becomes an object of suspicion (derived from "fear") among members of his own group. And even perhaps this "fear" (at least as exhibited by the peers of his racial group) grows from a deep-rooted and latent envy because mastering a language is not an easy task, and not everyone is endowed with a commensurate aptitude or the perseverance necessary to master language. Nonetheless, even the arbitrary gifts of nature or outright effort cannot remain unadulterated under the pathological conditions of colonization. As a result, Fanon claims, "[T]he fact that the newly returned Negro adopts a language different from that of the group into which he was born is evidence of a dislocation, a separation" (25). The native language has less currency in the colonial market place of power; therefore, the colonized person has to adopt the language of his oppressor for the sake of survival. This alienation from natal origins, due to the rejection of the native language for the sake of another, is for Fanon, a symptom, revealing the complex of inferiority. The imposed inferiority of the colonized race (by this I mean that the quality of inferiority was precipitated by the advent of European colonizers) complicates the issue of identity and the definition of self. Because there is an unequal power relationship between the colonizer and the colonized present in colonialism, this inequality complicates the Rationalist concept of self. As an exponent of Rationalist philosophy, Descartes famously states, Cogito ergo sum. I think; therefore, I am. According to Descartes, reason alone is sufficient to demonstrate existence and establish identity. However, in the colonial environment, the black race cannot just exist and define itself by thought/reason alone. Fanon writes, "Every dialect is a way of thinking" (25). For Fanon, language is a means of creating a self. Therefore, Fanon asserts that a black man simply isn't aware of his existence because he is a res cogitans (literally, a thinking thing). The black man in a colonial environment has his being created; other people create himin partthrough his use of language. A significant medium of identity in the colonial milieu is language. Therefore, as Fanon observes, "To speak pidgin to a Negro makes him angry, because he himself is a pidgin-nigger-talker [and] this automatic manner of classifying him, imprisoning him, primitivizing him, decivilizing him [...] makes him angry" (32). The unequal power relationship between oppressor and the oppressed in the colony is emphasized by the dividing line of native and European language. According to Fanon, to speak

the language of "pidgin" to someone in a colonial context indicates the speaker's superiority over the one addressed; the implication is that the person addressed hasn't mastered the idiom of power and therefore is not powerful. Consequently, the unequal power dynamic is inescapable even in daily conversation. Constantly being reminded of his inequality in the social dynamics of colonial life "makes" the colonized man "angry," distorts his own idea of self and robs him of the autonomy to determine self. The unequal power dynamics of colonial life require a formulation and means of establishing the certainty of self, which goes beyond the res cogitans of Descartes. For Descartes, thinking by itself is the act by which a person indubitably determines the fact of his own existence; however, for Fanon, speaking a language is the act by which a person will have his existence determined by others. As a testament to the power of language, Fanon states, "To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture" (38). Consequently, the black man in the colonial environment, as a res dicens (literally a thing which speaks), loses the selfdetermination of Descartes' res cogitans because the language that the black man speaks in the colonial environment becomes a measure by which his identity is determined by his oppressor. In contrast, the res cogitans defines, determines, irrefutably establishes his own existence by thinking: "I think; therefore, I am." Unfortunately, the inexorable reality of colonial life punishes the native language speaker who has no knowledge of the colonizer's language and even the person who attempts to assimilate imperfectly the language of the colonizer through the halfsteps of "pidgin" (32). Unequivocally, the black man's use of language almost always "imprision[s] him [and even] deciviliz[es] him" (32), according to the standards of the colonizer because the colonizer wants to maintain the unequal power relationship which privileges him over the colonized. Even when the subjugated person wins the approbation of the colonizer through his adroit use of the colonizer's language, this, nonetheless, confirms the unequal power relationship of colonialism. Fanon writes, "[T]here is nothing more exasperating than to be asked: 'How long have you been in France? You speak French so well'" (35). The assumption that underlies the compliment is that the black race is inferior to its white colonizers; therefore, the black man cannot possibly speak French as well as his white counterpart. And if he does speak French well, the racist assumption is that it is because he's lived in France among whites, for an extended amount of time. Fanon observes that "A white man in a colony has never felt inferior in any respect" (92), but those white men who benefit from the mechanism of colonialism never lose any opportunity to communicate what they believe to be the inherent inferiority of the colonized people because that unequal power relationship makes the mechanism of colonialism possible. The white's "fixed concept" (35) of the black man is an immovable object, against which the colonized race struggles. Faced with this daunting task, Fanon offers the black race a solution: "What is important is not to educate them [the white oppressors], but to [...] not be the slaves of their archetypes" (35). However, in not submitting to the inferior archetypes disseminated by the white race, the black man must also recognize his own pathological attempts at intellectual "lactification" (47). In his role as a physician, Fanon diagnoses the black race's own pathological desire to whiten itself. He adduces a patient's dream as evidence of this unhealthy tendency (99) and concludes, "I should help my patient to become conscious of his unconscious and abandon his attempts at a hallucinatory whitening [...]" (100). We see that under the institution of colonization the standard of culture and intellectual prowess is white: European literature, language, modes of dress and even domestic furnishing are the paradigm by which everything is measured a success or failure. In Erik H. Erikson's Youth and Crisis, he states that "German

ethnologists introduced the word 'Umwelt' to denote not merely an environment which surrounds you, but which is in you" (24). Unfortunately, the racists environment of colonialism, through the phenomenon of Umwelt, has transformed the patient internally. The exultation of everything white, at the expense of everything which isn't, drives Fanon's patient to conclude that his career problems result not from the inherent inequality of the colonial environment but from his own intellectual inferiority. Consequently, in Fanon's analysis of his patient's dream, he conforms to Freud's theory about dreams in two respects: that dreams have a manifest and latent content and that all dreams are a wish fulfillment (vide The Interpretation of Dreams). Therefore, Fanon educes the latent wish that the manifest content of the dream indirectly reveals: the patient with "problems in his career" (99) doesn't want to be physically white. That's just the manifest narrative of the dream. He wants his white peers to recognize his intellectual equality; this internal quality symbolically manifests itself in the dream as the external characteristic of skin color. Unfortunately, the mutilation of the black race under colonialism has no boundaries. Not only does it affect the mind but the body as well. For Fanon, there is a distinct difference in how the pathologies engendered by colonialism manifest themselves in men and women. Men suffer a pathological need to lactify the intellect, and women want to lactify the body. In describing the pathology of color fetish that black women suffer under colonialism, Fanon writes, "[E]very woman in Martinique knows this, says it, repeats it. Whiten the race, save the race, but not in the sense that one might think: not 'preserve the uniqueness of that part of the world in which they grew up,' but make sure that it will be white" (47). But from where does this inescapable and relentless motive to "be white" physically derive? In the world view of the female black colonial, "white and black represent the two poles of a world, two poles in perpetual conflict" (45), where being white is to "possess beauty and virtue, which have never been black" (45). Here, Fanon either purposefully, or indirectly, assigns beauty to be the sole domain of women. In doing so, he binds them to their bodies and limits them in a way that black men are not. A black man who speaks French well is to be "feared" (20-21). In Human All Too Human, Nietzsche writes, "[O]ne does not regard the enemy as evil; he can requite. In Homer, the Trojan and the Greek are both good. It is not he who does us harm, but he who is contemptible who counts as bad" (37). If we accept Nietzsche's explanation of the difference between good and bad, then we understand that the black man can at least find some kind of redemption under colonialism from his blackness through his intellect. Mastering the language of his colonizer evinces his intellectual prowess and elicits fear from the whites. The black man's intellectual achievements demonstrate that he is an equal to the white man because these achievements undeniably demonstrates that he "can requite" mentally. Finally, his equality results from an augmentation of himself rather than a negation of himself. He, after all, acquires another language to accompany his native language. However, since the black woman is restricted to the domain of the body, she's denied the equality with the whites that she might otherwise discover through the mind. The image of beauty is white in the mirror of colonialism, and the black woman must renounce her own body in order to reflect that image. While this neurosis alienates black women from their own bodies, it's an act of violence against black men as well. In describing the overriding concerns of black women in the colonial environment, who are infected with this pathological fetish for white skin, Fanon writes, "[T]he Negress and the mulatto. The first has only one possibility and one concern: to turn white. The second wants not only to turn white but also to avoid slipping back" (54). Both types of women reject their own black skin and that of the black men who surround them. Of course, this divides

the black race and creates internal opposition where there ought to be unity against a common white oppressor. This circumstance, moreover, engenders another complex of inferiority, which burdens the black man. In a twisted sense of evolution that Darwin himself would never recognize, endorse, nor advocate, white skin is categorically superior to black; therefore, a lighter skinned woman should "avoid slipping back," by giving birth to the dark skinned children, fathered by a black man. Consequently, in this scenario, black men are abandoned for lighter skinned partners in order to whiten the race. The perverted ideal is not to slip back but to progress forward, to evolve toward white. But only genuine progress is evident with Fanon's assertion that "In no way should my color be regarded as a flaw" (81). Moreover, this very attack against the body clearly manifests itself in the Rationalist movement's privileging of reason over the body, and this antagonism between the mind and body becomes a tool of the colonizer against the colonized. In illustrating the cultural attitude that pervades Europe against the black race, Fanon writes, "[W]hen one is dirty one is black--whether one is thinking of physical dirtiness or of moral dirtiness. In Europe, whether concretely or symbolically, the black man stands for the bad side of the character" (189). Being black alone is sufficient to indicate both "physical dirtiness" and "moral dirtiness." The body itself is the object of attack, and from the body, all the supposed flaws of the race are extrapolated. A culture inveterate with a prejudice against the body can easily excuse enslaving "the black man," exculpating itself with the agenda of civilizing the race with the enlightenment of Europe (e.g., the language and culture of France). Aware that this dichotomy between reason and the body has in part been used to enslave the black race, Fanon exposes and rejects this machination of European intellect when he states, "[F]or us the body is not something opposed to what you call the mind" (126-27). Here with an adroit rhetorical legerdemain, Fanon educes and dismisses the European notion that reason alone is the locus of virtue to which "the body" is "opposed." Consequently, since the body is not "opposed to [...] the mind," then it is no less the origin of virtue. Therefore, the black race cannot be condemned because of its color. Nevertheless, we should ask: "But what happens to the hapless person of color who has accepted and internalized (as irrefutable fact) the ubiquitous European prejudice that 'the Negro has one function: that of symbolizing the lower emotions, the baser inclinations, the dark side of the soul'" (190)? The ills of colonialism spare the black race in no way. It attacks the intellect, the body, and even the psyche of the colonized black race can be infected by the infirmity of Negrophobia. Describing the ailing collective unconscious of the denizens of the Antilles, Fanon writes, "[H]e is Negro who is immoral. If I order my life like that of a moral man, I simply am not a Negro. Whence the Martinican custom of saying of a worthless white man that he has 'a nigger soul'" (192). The psychological consequences of colonialism cannot be ignored. The black race turns against itself. Terms of racial reference are replete with derogatory self-castigation, immorality and worthlessness. Moreover, the greatest insult a Martinican can hurl against his white oppressor is a self-inditing racial epithet. Finally, Fanon observes that even the bastion of the black family is not safe from the psychological ills of Negrophobia. After all, the child confesses how his mother scolds him: "When I disobey, when I make too much noise, I am told to 'stop acting like a nigger'" (191). The reproach reveals the extent and gravity of the disease. Negrophobia has infected the very people it oppresses to the core of its social organization: the mother's relationship with her offspring. Unknowingly the mother inculcates the stereotypes and prejudices of colonial oppression, which advantage the white race and psychologically enslave her own children. Perhaps instead of disobeying unjust rules and making the noise of protest, children from these families passively accept their inimical circumstances.

How then can the black race heal itself in the context of colonialism? Fanon concerns himself with not only diagnosing the infirmities inflicted on the black race by colonialism, but a cure for them. The therapy toward health begins by examining the nature of comparison, which occurs in the colonial milieu. In describing the plight of the entire black race in the context of colonialism, Fanon writes, "The Negro is comparison. There is the first truth. He is comparison: that is, he is constantly preoccupied with self-evaluation and with the ego-ideal. Whenever he comes into contact with someone else, the question of value, of merit arises" (211). The circumstance of comparison robs the black man of his self-determination because he is determined by someone else's standard. Fanon is acutely aware that as long as the black race continues to judge itself in relation to the white race, then it will inevitably be living in a pathological condition because the cultural ethos of colonialism has unjustly determined that everything good is white, and everything bad is black. In The Conquest of Happiness, Bertrand Russell observes that "seeing things never in themselves but only in their relations" is "one form of a vice" (71). In order to escape the "vice" of always seeing his life in relation to the white race, the black man, according to Fanon, must create himself, despite the difficulties of whatever situation he may have been born into. Asserting the in-escapability of this existential burden, the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset writes in "Man Has No Nature" that "Man has to be himself in spite of unfavorable circumstances" (153). This heroic act of self-determination transforms the black man from being a "comparison," who exists only in relation to the "egoideal" of the oppressor's standard, to being a man who, according to Fanon, can proclaim: "I am my own foundation" (231). In not submitting to the definition imposed on him by others, the black man epitomizes a struggle central to existential philosophy: self-determination. Describing the reaction of black men who confront the loss of self-definition, Fanon writes, "[T]he first impulse of the black man is to say no to those who attempt to build a definition of him" (36). Here in this passage, Fanon clearly illustrates the existential dilemma of the "black man." He always finds himself being defined by others, of having to live under the weight of a definition created by someone not black. This definition is as inescapable as the color of his skin. Acutely aware that the black race suffers this kind of condemnation in a racist society, Fanon states, "I am over determined from without. I am the slave [...] of my own appearance" (116). Consequently, Fanon embraces and espouses existential philosophy as a means to self-determination, which transcends the arbitrary circumstance of skin color. A tenet central to Existential philosophy is that humanity is burdened with the freedom of self-determination. In the essay "Existentialism is a Humanism," Sartre asserts that "Man makes himself; he is not found ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of his own morality" (364365). A tenet of Existential philosophy is the assertion that people are categorically responsible for their own identity through choice. This philosophy rejects the notion that people are "readymade" by a litany of objective circumstances: socio-economic class, color, religion et cetera. Rather, people only consent (i.e., they choose) to be determined by these accidental characteristics of birth. Yet this very autonomy of choice, essential to the making of self, is ostensibly denied the black man under the unequal power relationship of the colonial environment. In the eyes of those around him, the color of his skin "makes" him who he is. Consequently, in the circumstance where people are judged by the color of their skin, Fanon concludes that the black man is "the eternal victim of an essence, of an appearance for which he is not responsible" (35). The black man is a "victim" of "an appearance," and its corresponding associations in the world of white colonizers. This "essence" is predicated on an external and

arbitrary characteristic (i.e., the color of his skin) that he did not choose but that nonetheless condemns him, by the standards of others (i.e., his oppressor). Nevertheless, "the impulse of the black man [...] to say no" (36) to an essence of him, created by someone else, is an act of existential rebellion and liberation. For Fanon, actively participating in the existential struggle for self-determination is a rejection of history as a source of identity. Expressing this rejection of history, Fanon writes, "The discovery of the existence of a Negro civilization in the fifteenth century confers no patent of humanity on me. Like it or not, the past can in no way guide me in the present moment" (225). One might rightly ask why Fanon chooses to reject history when it can serve as a positive guide to the black race in the present? Again, I think this rejection of history, even though it may be positive, reflects Fanon's existential impulse to place the burden of identity on the person in the present. Just as the white men "build a definition" of the black race (36), history itself, for Fanon, builds a definition of the race. And it unduly relieves the black race of the burden of selfdetermination in the present. The race can easily tout past achievements of ancestors as a way to dignify itself in the abject conditions of the present, but these past achievements are no true consolation because they do nothing to change the presentaccording to Fanon's way of thinking. His concern for immediate social justice compels him to confess that "I should be very happy to know that a correspondence had flourished between some Negro philosopher and Plato. But I can absolutely not see how this fact would change anything in the lives of the eight-yearold children who labor in the cane fields of Martinique or Guadeloupe" (230). Finally, in rejecting history, Fanon places the burden of identity on the black race in the present, but he also frees it from carrying the burden of the past. He writes, "I am not the slave of the slavery that dehumanized my ancestors" (230). When he makes this statement, he speaks for the black race as a whole. Fanon's prescription for the ills engendered by colonialism is existentialism and the radical responsibility of self-determination. An aspect of this selfdetermination, for Fanon, is "not [to be] a prisoner of history" (229). If one is "dehuamanized" by the memories of the injustices suffered by his "ancestors," then he becomes a "prisoner of history." Imprisoned by history, he forsakes his own freedom, and Fanon un-flinchingly asserts that "My freedom turns me back on myself" (229). Freedom, of the type that Fanon understands as the therapy for the detrimental effects of colonialism, begins and ends with the self--a self not imprisoned or falsely determined by the injustices or achievements of the past. Finally, existentialism provides for the colonized black race the same autonomy of selfdefinition afforded the res cogitans of Descartes. According to existentialism, identity is mutable, and therefore one can transcend both race and history (often used to oppress the black race in a racist colonial environment) to create self, rather than being condemned to a self. In harmony with the existential belief that humanity is its own author, Fanon writes, "In the world through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself" (229). "[E]ndlessly creating" the self is the ultimate freedom and cure one achieves after successfully undergoing the therapy of existential philosophy. In "Man Has No Nature," Jose Ortega y Gasset states, "To be free means to be lacking in constitutive identity, not to have subscribed to a determined being, to be able to be other than what one was, to be unable to install oneself once and for all in any given being" (156). Embracing the philosophy that one lack[s] a constitutive identity is the freedom from an essence, often pejoratively determined by color and history in a colonial environment. The person that can do this escapes the accidents of circumstance, used to condemn the colonized race. The responsibility of endlessly creating the self is an active response to conditions that the colonized, at times, unfortunately passively accept. Fanon clearly understands that people

passively choose their plight because they refuse the challenge to endlessly creat[e] the self. Yet this difficult self-creating is necessary for realizing the hope and the true health of freedom. The philosophy advocated by Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks isn't applicable only to the plight of those oppressed by colonialism. Fanon writes, The Negro problem does not resolve itself into the problem of Negroes living among white men but rather of Negroes exploited, enslaved, despised by a colonialist, capitalist society that is only accidentally white (202). Here Fanon makes provisions for us all. Humanity of any color, gender and ethnicity can find itself exploited, enslaved, despised by a [...] capitalist society, so we all need the means to liberate ourselves from such oppression. Though Existentialism is not the only remedy for overcoming such oppression, Fanon certainly makes a strong case for embracing the principles of the philosophy. The value of this great book is that its message is not isolated in history or limited in audience.

Works Cited Erikson, Erik H. Identity, Youth and Crisis. New York: W.W. Norton, 1968. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. ---. Human, All Too Human. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Cambridge UP, 1987. Ortega y Gasset, Jose. Man Has No Nature. Ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York: Penguin Group, 1956. 152-157. Russell, Bertrand. The Conquest of Happiness. New York: W.W. Norton, 1930. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism Is a Humanism. Ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York: Penguin Group, 1956. 345-369.

Works Referenced Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. John Cottingham. New York: Cambridge UP, 1996. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Ed. and trans. James Strachey. New York: Avon Books, 1965.