The Spouter-Inn

52. Black Skin, White Masks.


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I came into this world anxious to uncover the meaning of things, my soul

desirous to be at the origin of the world, and here I am an object among other
objects.
    Locked in this suffocating reification, I appealed to the Other so that his
liberating gaze, gliding over my body suddenly smoothed of rough edges, would
give me back the lightness of being I thought I had lost, and taking me out of
the world put me back in the world. But just as I get to the other slope I
stumble, and the Other fixes me with his gaze, his gestures and attitude, the
same way you fix a preparation with a dye. I lose my temper, demand an
explanation.... Nothing doing. I explode. Here are the fragments put together
by another me.

We like to begin each year with a book that will challenge us with some

theoretical perspectives and insights, which we can have rattling around our
minds as we carry on the year’s reading. This year we are beginning with
Frantz Fanon’s 1952 classic Black Skin, White Masks. A collection of
essays exploring the construction of the author’s psyche (as a Black man from
Martinique), Fanon looks at the personal impacts of colonialism, the ways that
psychoanalysis might be adapted to understand the colonized psyche, and what
possible futures might lie ahead. Chris and Suzanne explore the book’s
argument and its literary qualities, as well as reflecting on how Fanon’s
essays continue to resonate today.

Show Notes.

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks.

[Bookshop.]

Also by Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth.

An overview of Fanon’s thinking.

Stuart Hall: Why

Fanon?
[requires institutional access, alas]

Manichaeism.

Interpellation.

Aimé Césaire.

Léopold Senghor.

Glen Sean Coulthard: Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics

of Reconciliation.

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui: “A Structure, Not an Event”: Settler Colonialism and

Enduring Indigeneity.

Next: Augustine: Confessions.

[Bookshop.]

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The Spouter-InnBy Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Chris Piuma

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