On Fanon

Existentialism demands and speaks of freedom, responsibility, and gives me an appealing critique of my cherished value system. I realize now that it has also widely resonated with Black-American writers like Richard Wright and James Baldwin. Reading Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks for the very first time was my first experience reading an approach of philosophy that started from the vantage point of the black self. The fifth chapter of the book, “The Fact of Blackness” had an incredible impact on my intellectual growth. It was as if someone for the first time, in philosophy, outlined my own existence as a black person in the white colonized world.

I find great similarities between Fanon’s work and Jean-Paul Sartre’s own work in existentialism. Similarly to Roquentin’s feeling of nausea, though in his case fully aware of his own existential predicaments as a racialized person, Fanon gives a phenomenological account of his efforts in coping and navigating a racist world. The hyper awareness of his own self in relation to an Other and a world, which radically and brutally “otherizes” him is what resonated deeply with me.

I found this specific chapter meaningful because it gave an example on how I could recall and articulate my own experiences of discrimination in their direct immediacy. Like Sartre, Fanon showed that one is always aware of one’s self in relation to the other. As a black person, he shed light on the double consciousness that black people have to endure. In spite of my great love for philosophical thinking, philosophy continues unfortunately to be, a space in which black individuals become hyper aware of their own marginalization. This feeling can be nauseating. But like Fanon’s own reliance on existentialism, I believe philosophy still offers the means to make sense of some of our most complex experiences.