recalling frantz fanon

Recent events have made me want to go back to reading Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks. The brother was a genius. Or at least he had a deep and far-ranging analysis of the ways in which white supremacy drives both black folks and white folks crazy. The style is sometimes hard to follow in the sense that he doesn't give us a systematic explanation or perspective. Instead, he presents the reader with flashes of experiences. And if you see yourself in them, fine. If you don't see yourself in them, that's fine too.

The way he puts it:

Many Negroes will not find themselves in what follows. This is equally true of many whites. But the fact that I feel a foreigner in the worlds of the schizophrenic or the sexual cripple in no way diminishes their reality. The attitudes that I propose to describe are real. I have encountered them innumerable times.

His other main work, Wretched of the Earth also deals with some of the same questions, except in the context of a national resistance movement against colonial oppression (the Algerian Revolution).

Some Quotes from Black Skin, White Masks

Some excerpts from Wretched of the Earth and related literature