Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Indigenous Americas) (23 page)

Similar themes are further developed and elaborated by Sartre in “Black Orpheus,” his well-known preface to Léopold Senghor’s 1948 anthology of negritude poetry,
Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre at malgache de langue
française
.
29
However, unlike the situation sketched in
Anti-Semite and Jew
two years earlier, Sartre, now explicitly Marxist in orientation, begins “Black Orpheus” with an important distinction drawn between the situation faced by the Jew in his or her encounter with anti-Semitism, and that of the colonized black person in the context of anti-black racism. Like the condition of the Jew vis-à-vis anti-Semitic racism, and now the “white worker” vis-à-vis the capitalist mode of production, Sartre locates the oppression of colonized black people “in the capitalist structure of . . . society.” However, unlike the situations of the Jew and the white worker, the black person finds him or herself a victim of capitalist exploitation and domination “
insofar as he is black
and by virtue of being a colonized native or deported African.” In other words, for the colonized black worker, capitalist exploitation and domination is
mediated
through the lens of race and through the lived experience of racism. Now, as we saw previously, for Sartre, the victimization of Jews by capitalism is also mediated through anti-Semitism and their experience
as Jews
, but he then goes on to explain that, unlike the Jew, “there is no means of evasion” for the black person; “no ‘passing’ that he can consider: a Jew—a white man among white men—can deny that he is a Jew, can declare himself a man among men. The [N]egro cannot deny that he is a [N]egro, nor can he deny that he is part of some abstract colorless humanity: he is black.”
30

What does this mean for the black subject who chooses to act authentically in her or his situation? Here Sartre claims that the black person essentially has “his back up against the wall of authenticity.”
31
As he explains: “Having been insulted and formally enslaved, [the black person] picks up the word ‘nigger’ which was thrown at him like a stone, he draws himself erect and proudly proclaims himself as black, in the face of the white man. The unity which will come eventually, bringing all oppressed peoples together in the same struggle, must be preceded in the colonies by what I shall call the moment of separation or negativity; this anti-racist racism is the only road that will lead to the abolition of racial differences.”
32

In positing negritude as an “anti-racist racism” that will eventually lead to the abolition of racial and class differentiation altogether, Sartre is situating the formation of black consciousness in relation to a distinction, often attributed to Marx, between a class that exists “in-itself” and one that exists “for-itself.”
33
Without going into too much detail here, a class that exists in-itself represents the objective, structural positioning of a group in relation to the
capitalist mode of production. Whereas a class that exists for-itself is one that has become
conscious
of itself
as a class
and then proceeds to struggle
for-itself
and thus in its own shared interests. And, of course, the primary agenda of a class that struggles for-itself is to root out the conditions (capitalist production) that determine its existence
as a class
. However, since the lived, subjective experience of race and racism occupies a mediating position in the exploitation and domination of black people by capitalism, “recognizing that socialism is the necessary answer to [the] immediate local claims” of black people first requires that they “learn to formulate these claims jointly; therefore they must [first] think of themselves
as blacks
.” Hence, Sartre concludes that “becoming conscious” for black workers “is different from that which Marxism tries to awaken in the white worker.” In the case of the European proletariat, “class consciousness” is “based on the objective characteristics of the
situation
of the proletariat. But since the selfish scorn that whites display for blacks . . . is aimed at the deepest recesses of the heart, [black people] must oppose it with a more exact view of black
subjectivity
.
34
For Sartre, developing this subjective opposition is the critical role played by negritude in anticapitalist and antiracist struggle.

So, then, for Sartre, becoming conscious of one’s
objective
class position in the context of racialized capitalism requires that black people first work over the
subjective
dimension of race and racism. One cannot hope to uproot the social relations that give rise to both class exploitation and racial domination without first coming to grips with the corrosive effects that white supremacy has had on those subject to it. This is why Sartre attributes to negritude a revolutionary “function” in the struggle against capitalist imperialism.
35
In short, disalienation through the affirmative reconstruction of black subjectivity, which, as Aimé Césaire once noted, strikes at the core of what the negritude movement was all about,
36
serves as the precondition for establishing broader bonds of social solidarity and collective struggle. However, like the Marxist notion of a class that exists for-itself, the moment that black consciousness comes to fruition and affirms its worth as such, it must immediately seek to abolish itself as a form of individual/collective identification. In doing so, Sartre claims that the “subjective, existential, ethnic notion of
negritude
‘passes,’ as Hegel says, into the objective, positive, and precise, notion of the
proletariat
.”
37

At this point we arrive at Sartre’s infamous characterization of negritude as a transitional phase in a dialectical move from the particularity of identity
politics to the universality of class struggle.
38
“Negritude appears,” writes Sartre, “as a minor moment of a dialectical progression: the theoretical and practical affirmation of white supremacy is the thesis; the position of negritude as the antithetical value is the moment of negativity. But this negative moment is not sufficient in itself, and these blacks who use it know this perfectly well; they know that it aims at preparing the synthesis or realization of the human in a raceless society.” Sartre then goes on to conclude that “negritude is [thus] for destroying itself, it is a passage and not an outcome,
a means and not an ultimate end
.”
39
Once again, here Sartre appears to portray the politics of difference much like he did in
Anti-Semite and Jew
: as an important (even necessary)
stage
in the struggle against capitalist exploitation and racial domination, but ultimately insufficient as an end in itself.

Frantz Fanon on Negritude, Self-Recognition, and Decolonization

As discussed previously in chapter 1, one of the central concerns animating Fanon’s analysis in
Black Skin, White Masks
is the problem of recognition in situations marked by colonial racism. In this sense, I argue that Fanon’s early work ought to be interpreted much like Sartre’s
Anti-Semite and Jew
and
“
Black Orpheus”: as a practical reworking of Hegel’s master/slave relation in contexts where the possibility of achieving affirmative relations of mutual recognition appears foreclosed. Like Sartre’s portrayal of intersubjectivity discussed above, Fanon’s phenomenological account of “being-for-others” in
Black Skin, White Masks
emphasizes the ultimately objectifying and alienating character of intersubjective recognition, especially when these relations are played out in contexts structured by racial or cultural inequality. Indeed, throughout his text, Fanon describes the experience of colonial recognition in profoundly negative terms, like being “fixed” or “walled in” by the violating “gaze” of another.
40
Far from being emancipatory and self-confirming, recognition is instead cast as a “suffocating reification,” a “hemorrhage” that causes the colonized to collapse into
self
-objectification.
41
However, unlike the situation of Sartre’s Jew in
Anti-Semite and Jew
, when fixated on the colonized black subject the gaze takes on a new significance for Fanon: “I am not given a second chance. I am
overdetermined from the outside
. I am a slave not to the ‘idea’ that others have of me, but to my appearance.”
42
This leads Fanon to declare that the “black man,” unlike the Jew, “has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man.”
43
Here Fanon appears to be making a qualification in line with the distinction Sartre came to make in “Black Orpheus”
regarding the difference between the situation of the Jew vis-à-vis anti-Semitic racism, and that of the colonized black person vis-à-vis anti-black racism.

How do colonized populations tend to respond to this situation? According to Fanon, like Sartre’s Jew, the colonized black person’s most common response is that of “flight.”
44
As Fanon describes, colonial recognition will often provoke within the oppressed a desire to “escape” their particularity, to negate the differences that mark them as morally deficient and inferior in the eyes of the colonizer: “The Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro is wicked, the Negro is ugly.”
45
Once internalized, these derogatory images often produce a pathological yearning to “be recognized
not as Black, but as White
.”
46
Fanon uses a number of terms to describe the result of this process: “inferiority complex,” “psycho-existential complex,” “neurosis,” and “alienation” being the most common. All of these designations are used by Fanon to describe the subjectifying hold that colonial power can have on those within its reach. Seen in this light, there is nothing “inherent” about the perceived “inferiority” attributed to colonized subjects by the dominant society, nor is there anything “natural” about the so-called “complexes” they suffer as a result.
47
Both are the product of colonial social relations: “If there is a flaw, it lies not in the ‘soul’ of the [colonized] individual, but in his environment.”
48

This, then, is the problematic that Fanon sets out to address in the bulk of his work: namely, what forms of decolonial praxis must one individually and collectively undertake to subvert the interplay between structure and subjectivity that sustain colonial relations over time. Fanon’s complex engagement with negritude is best understood when examined against this dual-structured conception of power. Fanon argued that insofar as the negritude movement sought to undercut the incapacitating effects of internalized racism by discursively reinscribing value and worth to those identity-related differences that colonial discourse had hitherto characterized as savage, dirty, and evil, it constituted a potentially powerful first move in the struggle for freedom.
49
The logic here is that one cannot hope to restructure the social relations of colonialism if the “inferiority complex” produced by these relations is left in place.
50
But Fanon’s endorsement of negritude’s approach to self-recognition was by no means absolute. Indeed, as his narrative continues it becomes apparent that the very attributes of negritude that he saw as potentially the most empowering in
the subjective sphere—namely, the rehabilitation of the colonized subject based on a revaluation of black history and culture—are also the ones that threaten to undercut the movement’s transformative potential in the structural sphere. What is important to keep in mind, then, is a distinction Fanon highlights between what Nigel Gibson has called, negritude’s “objective” limitations, “and its subjective necessity.”
51

In
Black Skin, White Masks
negritude’s subjective worth is expressed most in chapter 5, “The Lived Experience of the Black Man.”
52
At this point in the text Fanon is faced with the realization that appealing “to the [white] Other” for recognition is a lost cause, and as a result he decides to instead “assert
himself
as a BLACK MAN.”
53
“Since the Other was reluctant to recognize me, there was only one answer:
to make myself known
.”
54
In doing so, Fanon found himself fervently excavating “black antiquity” and what he “discovered left [him] speechless”: not only was the white man wrong, black people were not “primitive or subhuman” and belonged to a civilization in its own right—with its own history, values, traditions, and achievements.
55
This discovery, made possible by the path forged by the negritude poets, left Fanon feeling empowered, confident, and mobilized: it provided, if only momentarily, the sense of self-worth, dignity, and respect that recognition from the dominant society had not only failed to deliver, but undercut at every step of the way. Subsequently, Fanon was no longer willing to be recognized on terms imposed by the colonizer: “Accommodate me as I am; I’m not accommodating anyone.”
56

Later in the chapter negritude’s subjective significance is again emphasized, this time in relation to Sartre’s controversial portrayal of the movement as a mere “phase” in the unfolding trajectory of class struggle.
57
Fanon writes: “When I read this . . . I felt they had robbed me of my last chance. . . . We had appealed to a friend of the colored peoples, and this friend had found nothing better to do than demonstrate the relativity of [our] actions.” After being denied affirmative recognition from the colonial society, Fanon now found himself having to defend his self-affirmative actions against the position of a self-professed ally. All approaches seemed to cash out in a loss: “I couldn’t hope to win,” writes Fanon; “I wanted to be typically black—that was out of the question. I wanted to be white—that was a joke. And when I tried to claim my negritude intellectually as a concept, they snatched it away from me.”
58
Consequently, the foundation upon which Fanon had managed to carve out a constructive relation-to-self was again cut from under him: “I sensed my
shoulders slipping from this world, and my feet no longer felt the caress of the ground. Without a black past, without a black future, it was impossible for me to live my blackness. Not yet white, no longer completely black, I was damned.”
59
In characterizing negritude’s reconstruction of black subjectivity as a temporary moment in the historical narrative of class struggle, Sartre effectively stripped Fanon of his newly won consciousness.