SLK320 EXAM NOTES
SECTION A: CRITICAL PSYCHOLOGY
CHAPTER 5: FANON AND THE PSYCHOANLAYSIS OF RACISM
LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
Explain how Fanon adapts, in conditional ways, theoretical notions of psycho- analysis (such
as those of neurosis, phobia, paranoia, the ‘European collective unconscious’, and so on) to
illustrate the workings of colonial racism
Elaborate and apply Fanon’s psychoanalytic account of racism, with particular reference to
the terms of projection, anxiety, sexuality, guilt, scapegoating, the racial stereotype, the
idealising component of racism etc.
Introduction: The Psychological Analysis of Power
Fanon moves between the socio-political & psychological (psychopolitics)
Psychopolitics: critical awareness of the role that political factors play within the domain of the
psychological
o Understanding of both how politics impacts upon the psychological and how personal
psychology may be the level at which politics is internalised
Use of Psychology to illustrate the political (Psychoanalysis)
Sees psychology in politics & politics in psychology
To say something about racism
Adapts psychoanalysis to move beyond individual and to consider context related to racism
Psychopolitics
• Role of relations of power (political) within the psychological domain
• Reciprocal relationship between the political and the psychological
1. Social order politicises psychology – to maintain the status quo
2. Psychology can create the status quo – ability to create, justify and maintain oppressive regimes
• E.g., Apartheid or the American Psychology Association’s (APA) politicisation of psychology • Fanon
politicises psychology by applying psychological concepts to power relations in a racial/colonial
context
“Many white folk get very upset when reading anti-racism writing that refers to the term
“whiteness”.
They take it personally and think it is a direct attack on their white skin. But whiteness does not refer
to skin colour or white people so much as it refers to a system of discrimination based on an artificial
,ideology of race, power and privilege. It is the system itself, rather than the white individual, that is
critiqued by antiracism activists.”
Ø One aspect of such a psychopolitics – that is, the explicit politicisation of the psychological –
occurs through the placing of a series of ostensibly psycho- logical concerns and concepts
within the register of the political
Ø Fanon shows up the extent to which human psychology is intimately linked to sociopolitical
and historical forces.
Ø A second route of a psychopolitics lies in employing psychological concepts and
explanations to describe and illustrate the workings of power. It is the latter which forms the
focus of the current chapter.
Ø The hope of this approach is that, by being able to analyse the political in such a
psychological way, we might be able to think strategically about how we should intervene in
‘the life of power’
Ø It is hence not only the case that Fanon brings politics into psychology; he also brings
psychology into politics by analysing power through a series of psychoanalytic
conceptualisations which help to dramatise the logic and working of such forms of power,
and particularly that of colonial racism.
Ø This is what we may term Fanon’s analysis of the ‘psychic life of the colonial encounter’.
Ø The objective of such psychological descriptions is to subject such forms of power to
critique, to understand them better so as more effectively to challenge them.
Ø These two approaches – the politics of psychology and the psychology of politics – should be
seen as complementary and, more than that, as in fact necessary to one another.
Ø In fact, one might advance the argument that one has not sufficiently grasped Fanon if one is
unable to see both the political within the psychological and the psychological within the
political.
Ø In working through the psychic life of the colonial encounter we shall touch again –
although in different analytical ways – on certain of the themes discussed in the previous
chapter.
Ø Rather than being repetitive, the aim here is to provide, as Fanon does, a layered theoretical
approach to the problems of black identity in racist/colonial contexts.
Ø The aim, in short, is to use complementary theoretical explanations to build a unique
analytical framework able to critique aspects of colonial experience from a variety of
perspectives.
, Ø Psychopolitics: critical awareness of the role that political factors (ie relations of power) play
within the domain of the psychological. An understanding of both how politics impacts upon
the psychological and how personal psychology may be the level at which politics is
internalised, individually entrenche
The Psychic Life of Colonial Power
The Dream of Turning White
White coloniser and the black colonised exist within a ‘massive psycho-existential complex’ which
has multiple detrimental psychological effects
Fanon looks at underlying motivating dreams, actions and the personality of the colonised
o One simple wish of the black man is to be white
o In the context of the white man having everything and the black man nothing
This desire to be white is an outcome of a specific configuration of power, of real material,
economic, cultural and socio-political conditions
o That continually celebrate and empower the white subject and continually denigrate the
black man or woman
Fanon tracks the implications of this answer, of wanting to be white, across domains of language,
sexuality, dreams and behaviour, and finds the wishes:
o To take on the white’s language and culture o For a white spouse or sexual partner
o To turn white, actions of skin whitening, hair straightening etc.
These wishes are derived from inequalities present in wider social structures
• Looks at the relationship between colonised and coloniser (racism)
• Above race, he looks at the mechanisms of inequality
• What do the colonised want? To be white (the opportunity for everything instead of nothing)
• Desire to be white related to need for equal opportunities (economic, power, ultimately choice)
• Implications? Skin lightening, language, culture, hair
• “…ultimately derived from inequalities present in wider social structures…” can’t be reduced to
individual
Ø The prime focus of his psychoanalytic attentions is the juxtaposition of white and black races
in the context of colonisation.
Ø The white coloniser and the black colonised exist within the grip of a ‘massive
psychoexistenial complex’ he suggests, that has multiple detrimental psychological effects.
Such effects are realized not only in the dreams of the colonised but also in the psychic life
of the colonised, who, in many ways, thinks of himself (or herself ) as white.
, Ø In accordance with psychoanalytic theory, Fanon looks to the underlying desire motivating
the dreams, the actions and the personality of the colonised, and claims to find there a
simple wish.
Ø ‘What does the black man want?’ he asks mimicking Freud’s famous ‘What does a woman
want?’.
Ø He answers that ‘The black man wants to be white’ Now it is of vital importance here that
we contextualise this wish within the colonial context, that is, within a context in which the
white subject has – in relative terms – everything and where the black man or woman has
nothing.
Ø Hence this desire to be white is not in any way trans-historical or universal; rather, it is an
outcome of a specific configuration of power, of real material, economic, cultural and
sociopolitical conditions that continually celebrate and empower the white subject and
continually denigrate and dispossess the black man or woman.
Ø Trans-historical: across all historical settings
Ø Fanon tracks the implications of this answer – of wanting to be white – across the domains
of language, sexuality, dreams and behaviour, finding in each instance the persistence of this
wish – the taking on of the white’s language and culture, the desire for a white spouse or
sexual partner, the dream of turning white, actions of skin whitening, hair-straightening and
so on.
Ø It is this fundamental wish and its affects, the kinds of identity, conflict and pathology it
leads to, that form the focal points of Fanon’s analysis, and indeed, that he is alluding to
with the title of Black skin, white masks.
Ø Importantly, even in his use of a psychoanalytic interpretative approach, Fanon points out
that such ‘pathologies of affect’, even once ‘wired through’ the sexual realms, through
unconscious processes, are ultimately derived from inequalities present in wider social
structures and cannot as such be reduced to the internal psychical workings of individual
subjects.
Neuroses of Blackness
For Fanon, this dream of turning white is a neurotic condition or a ‘nervous condition’
Neurosis: emotional disorder, manifest at the level of personality, which stems from conflict
between a fundamental impulse and the need to repress this instinct
Neurosis can lead to a whole series of irrational behaviours and beliefs that are the result of
conflict
o Between powerful unconscious urges and the social need to keep these urges
outside of the conscious mind
