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Summary Essay answer for: "Discuss how Fanon uses psychoanalysis to understand the nature of racism. Illustrate whether or not you agree with Fanon’s creative usage of psychoanalytic concepts during your discussion?"$2.75
Summary Essay answer for: "Discuss how Fanon uses psychoanalysis to understand the nature of racism. Illustrate whether or not you agree with Fanon’s creative usage of psychoanalytic concepts during your discussion?"
An essay format answer to the SLK 320(A) semester test question: "Discuss how Fanon uses psychoanalysis to understand the nature of racism. Illustrate whether or not you agree with Fanon’s creative usage of psychoanalytic concepts during your discussion?"
DISCUSS HOW FANNON USES PSYCHOANALYSIS TO UNDERSTAND NATURE OF RACISM.
USE PSYCHOANALYTIC CONCEPTS TO ILLUSTRATE WHETHER YOU AGREE
Fannon makes use of a combination of concepts such as Marxism, psychoanalysis and
existentialism in order to generate a critique of the relations of power, which exist in racist and
colonial environments. His utilisation of Eurocentric notions such as “oppressive”, “racist”, “colonial”
assist in his argument about one dominant social political group. Fannon strategically makes use of
psychological and psychoanalytic terms in analysis to a great political effect. Additionally, he
rejects the aggressive imposition of western culture, as well as its values and its norms.
Psychoanalysis works by projecting European cultural values onto the colonial context in an
attempt to hide oppression. Fannon found evidence of victim-blaming within colonializations
attempts to self-justify forms of explanation. In addition, he rejects Hegel‟s “slave-master dialectic”
which involves the participation of both parties in the struggle for recognition. However, he does
not completely reject Marxist ideas as he expresses concern towards how it applies to colonial
contexts.
He assesses racism by defining opposing categories such as “blackness” versus “whiteness”, and
“African culture” versus “European culture”. The main idea of his work holds that Eurocentric
theories must be revaluated and reformulated to be sufficient within these colonial contexts. He
stresses how racism, colonial violence and exploitation have replaced traditional Eurocentric
theoretical analysis.
First world contexts cannot properly address forms of power that are specific to colonial and
postcolonial situations. The danger of these systems is that they risk homogenising the terms that
define the colonial environment. Fanon applies subliminal double standards in how black and white
subjects are understood and evaluated.
Manichean thinking is that which considers how racial implementation rationalises notions of
difference, superiority and inferiority. The colonial division of space influences the constructed
notions of psychological, cultural and moral difference. The colonial world is divided into two
compartments. These two components are opposed but not in the service of a higher unity. In
other words, both zones obey the rules of pure Aristotelian logic and follow the principle of
reciprocal exclusivity.
Fanon‟s „critical psychology‟ can be described as a direction of „psychopolitics‟ that politicises
psychology by approaching issues of social power and politics via the critical use of a
psychological (or psychoanalytic) vocabulary. Importantly, when Fanon revisits the domain of
psychoanalysis so as to provide us with an interpretation of the psychodynamics of racism, he is
wary not to reduce racism to the intrapsychic or to naturalise it in any way.
Fanon‟s investigation ties his psychological analyses at each point towards real socio-political and
historical circumstances of colonial domination. By adapting the theoretical notion of neurosis into
that of racial neurosis, Fanon succeeds in providing a powerful account of the damaging impact of
a „white psychology‟. In other words, he is able to portray critically and analytically the severity of
the impact upon the identity and psyche of racist politics on the black subject.
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