The CLR James Journal

Volume 23, Issue 1/2, Fall 2017

Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks
The Irreducibility of Black Bodies

This piece argues that Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks inscribes the social and psychological experience of the African Diaspora within the conceptual purview of the western sciences by the means of psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts. The upshots of Fanon’s goal are twofold. Its first implication is that in employing psychoanalytical and philosophical lingo, Fanon commits to delineating a distinct tenet of self-determination for the African Diaspora. Such tenet of self-determination consists in a set of norms, beliefs, socio-cultural, and political practices. Secondly, besides the stated goal in the Introduction, namely to ‘liberate the black individual from herself,’ Fanon is attempting to alter the European perception of black communities as sexual and biological threats. Accordingly, this piece concludes that Fanon’s successful inscription of the psychological and lived experiences of the African Diaspora in the western sciences, via his psychoanalytical and philosophical rendition, is hampered by the European perception of black bodies which prevents their complete scientific conceptualization.