Eric Omazu
Department of Philosophy
National Open University of Nigeria
Email: eomazu@noun.edu.ng
and
Rakiya Mamman
Department of Development Studies
National Open University of Nigeria
Email: rmamman@noun.edu.ng
Abstract
Introduction
Colonialism is a term that captures the expansive agenda of some European nations right from the
Renaissance to the second half of the 20th century. Although the practice of colonialism stretches
back to about 1450 AD, its entry into the English Dictionary in the mid-nineteenth century speaks
volume of the ferocity of the practice during the period. There is always a difficulty in most
attempts to define the term as it is often confused with another term, imperialism, to which it is
closely related. Edward Said’s distinction settles the conceptual problem that exists between the
two terms when he associates imperialism with a nation ruling another nation from a distance and
imperialism with a nation implanting settlement of its citizens to rule over a distant territory and
its peoples (Said, 1994).
The imposition of colonial rule on any nation is always a function of power imbalance between
two nations. It subordinates the less powerful to the more powerful, and creates a system of rules
whose only consideration is the interest of the colonizing power. At the inception of any colonial
enterprise, the disparity that exists between colonizing nations and colonized ones is only
expressed in military terms. Hillaire Belloc (1898, vi) expressed the difference that military
prowess makes in any colonial relationship thus: “Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun,
and they have not,” was how. Nations that had more armaments were more likely to impose
themselves on others, and more likely to defend themselves against external imposition.
What is emphasized above is physical violence that attends colonialism. Earliest critics of
colonialism like Diderot based their criticism mainly on this physical violence which colonialism
entails, and the consequent loss of lives and limbs of the colonized and the colonizer. Indeed, this
is the most visible form of colonial violence. Frantz Fanon (2008) follows the same lead that
defines colonialism as a violent phenomenon. He avers that violence defines the first encounter
between the colonizer and the colonized, and that colonialism is maintained by violence. Adele
Jinaudu (1976) analyses Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth and
arrives at the conclusion that Fanon’s conception of colonialism as violence differs from others
Logos: African Journal of Philosophy and Studies. Vol. 4,2021
http://www.africanjournalofphilosophy.com
2
whose only emphasis is on the physical form of colonial violence. He holds that Fanon’s
description of colonialism as a violent enterprise does not see violence as only physical event. For
Adele, Fanon’s description has an eye on Galtung’s types of violence where violence is seen as
manifesting in three dimensions: physical, structural and psychological.
Fanon’s exposition of physical violence follows the same route as has been depicted above. He
points at discriminatory practices that characterize colonial societies as proof of structural violence
which colonialism entails. Apartheid South Africa is the most vivid example here and Fanon does
not hesitate to demonstrate the fact of structural violence inherent in colonialism with it. He writes
of compartmentalization, of different quarters for the natives and for the settlers, of schools for
natives and schools for Europeans. These structures are consequences of the colonial
disidentification of the colonized.
Frantz Fanon articulates the path of reidentification undertaken by the Africans in the presence of
colonial disidentification. He regards this as false route to African identity and highlights their
weaknesses. In this paper we are going to expose these false routes to African identity as
highlighted by fan importance of development in the confidence and recognition of the African as
a being in the world. In this paper, we shall examine Fanon’s thought on the themes of African
decolonization, African identity and African development as espoused in the Black Skin, White
Mask.
The Identity of the Colonized
Colonialism is built on the assumption that the Other is different. The truth about identity is such
that it is expressed in sameness and otherness, and in difference. Otherness and difference are
neutral concepts as they do not express axiological judgment in themselves. Thus, the statement
“I am not you” expresses the range of being I may not assume, and which is unlike me, which is
different. It is a statement that renders you the Other of me, and at the same time makes me the
Other of you without any statement about value judgment.
Colonialism thrives in contriving value judgments about concepts that are intrinsically neutral.
Thus, when it is said that colonialism is built on the assumption that the Other is different, both
terms, Otherness and Difference, are divested of their inherent neutrality. They acquire the toga of
measure of values. The values that are measured in this case are the colonizers and the colonized.
Hence, in every encounter that involves the colonizer and the colonized, the latter is viewed as the
natural inferior of the colonizer. This mode of conceiving the colonized as natural inferior of the
colonizer is the result of racism which permeates the colonial enterprise. Racism thrives in
assigning rigid, unchangeable status or identity to a group of persons. Colonialism brought the
white people in contact with people of other cultures whom they labeled as inferior. This toga of
inferiority permeates every aspect of the relationship involving the colonizer and the colonized,
and plays the role of legislating social status in a colonial encounter. The white man who is
perceived as superior assumes natural position of leadership while the black man assumes a
subordinate role (Fanon, 2008).
Logos: African Journal of Philosophy and Studies. Vol. 4,2021
http://www.africanjournalofphilosophy.com
3
To keep the colonized in his place requires a more elaborate philosophy and reason. Exploring the
Manichean terms of ‘men’ and ‘native’ that was popularized by Sartre in his foreword to Fanon’s
Wretched of the Earth, that has also characterized colonial literature, Abdul JanMohammed (1985)
holds that the colonizer contrived a systematic order that was founded on the ethical in which: “…
to say “native” is automatically to say “evil” and to evoke immediately the economy of the
Manichean allegory.
What JanMohammed shows is that the identity of the colonized people is the product of their being
labelled by the colonizer. This idea is well expressed by Roy Porter (1987) who invokes the
abstract imagery of madness in order to show the nature of colonial identity: “Madness is another
country.” Foisting a perjured identity on the colonized serves the purpose of justifying the
colonizers business of colonization. Thus, an ambush against the identity of the colonized is
considered the ultimate foundation for the colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Frantz Fanon explores the mode of this identification in a black colonial territory. For Fanon, the
black man is discriminated against because he is black, and his blackness pegs him at the zone of
non-human where his being is a complete negation of all that it entails to be human. Fanon was
forthright as he sums the situation of black man’s identity, the nature of his being, thus he states
forcefully: “At the risk of arousing the resentment of my coloured brothers, I will say that the black
man is not a man” (Fanon, 2008, 1).
What then is the black man if he is excluded from the zone of being human? Fanon’s answer thrusts
back to the recesses of evolutionary theory popularized by the English naturalist, Charles Darwin.
Fanon does not speak for himself. The answer he gives is not as a result of his own rational
consideration of what it means to be a black person. He merely reports an epistemological
understanding prevalent in his time: “It has been said that the Negro is the link between monkey
and man—meaning, of course, white man.” (Fanon, 2008, 18).
Fanon exploits the general mode of identifying a colonized black man in the colonial situation.
The general tendency is to regard him like a mammal. Whichever mammal that he is connected
with at every point of identification depends on which assigned peculiar characteristics the speaker
wants to emphasize. The reference to the Negro as the link between monkey and man plays on the
fact of the Negro’s bipedalism. What is being emphasized here is that the identification of the
Negro as a particular species of mammal is fluid. Jean Paul Sartre bears witness to this when he
shows the mode of identifying a black person prevalent in his native France, with which he was
also indoctrinated. “The Negroes did not worry me;” he writes, “I had been taught that they were
good dogs. With them, we were still among mammals.” Sartre does not elaborate on the reason
behind this identification of the Negroes as dogs but the reason begins to emerge when it is
discovered that the dog is highly regarded as a hyper active sexual animal. Thus, regarding the
Negro as a dog emphasizes the predominant view about the Negro as being endowed with high
sexual prowess and were immoral, promiscuous, libidinous and always desired white people
(Loomba, 1998).
Indeed, the ascription of animalistic and sexual qualities to the black person serves to delineate a
range of human qualities which they cannot assume. From such ascription follows the assumption
that the Negroes are irrational, immoral, base, and generally evil. How does the African rescue
Logos: African Journal of Philosophy and Studies. Vol. 4,2021
http://www.africanjournalofphilosophy.com
4
himself from this? We attempt an exposition of the many attempts made by Africans to reidentify
themselves as humans. Fanon regards them as false route to identity and points out what is wrong
with them.
Marriage and Sexual Relationship with a White Person
The first of these efforts is shown in the treatment of marriage and sexual relationship by Fanon.
He begins with his profession of his belief in the possibility of love. This belief is founded on his
own conception of the human person as a movement toward the world and toward his like. He
emphasizes that one of the dimensions of this movement towards one’s like entails a movement of
love, and a gift of oneself. Fanon leads one immediately into the depth of his meaning by calling
in the notion of gift into the discussion. A gift involves giving and receiving out of free will. It is
a human expression of goodwill. Thus, love is a gift, a free giving of oneself to another.
Sexual relationship that involves a man and a woman ought to be a love affair. For Fanon it ought
to entail a free giving of oneself to another, and should be devoid of any intentionality. Authentic
love, as conceived by Fanon, means:
Wishing for others what one postulates for oneself, when that postulation unites the
permanent values of human reality—(It, authentic love) entails the mobilization of
psychic drives basically freed of unconscious conflicts. (Fanon, 2008, 28).
Fanon assumes at once that this sort of love, authentic love is impossible in any relationship that
involves a black person and a white person. A return to the white man’s mode of conceptualizing
the black person is necessary here. The black person, in the white man’s view is an animal. From
this point of view, a white person who engages in a sexual relationship with the black person is a
degenerate. He knows this but still chooses to allow himself a momentary slip into the world of
the irrational. Fanon shows that such a relationship is not grounded in authentic love as there is no
mutual postulation for the other what one postulates for oneself. The white person in the
relationship does not define the black person the same way he defines himself as a human person.
As a result of this, his psyche is marred by unconscious conflict. Fanon quotes Mayotte Capecia
to prove the point of this unconscious conflict which exists in the psyche of the white partner in
any relationship involving him and a Negro woman: “But a woman of colour is never altogether
respectable in a white man’s eyes. Even when he loves her. I know that.” What Fanon wants to
question is the meaning of love without respect. What is love if it does not lead to the recognition
of the dignity of the one loved?
Karen Taylor tells that the act of sexual relation with a black woman was intended to denigrate her
all the more. She was seen as symbol of her race, and her conquest in a sexual relationship
symbolizes the subordination of the race which she symbolizes as such a relationship serves to
demonstrate to the colonized man that he is powerless. Beyond this, the black woman is completely
dehumanized in the psyche of the colonizer that he sees the sexual liaison with her as a sort of
personally-permitted-depravity on his part. Taylor observes this point this way: “Through the
coercive nature of colonial domination, colonizers sought to create a sexualized native bereft of
will, desire, or gaze. This native was to be a tabula rasa for European sexual imaginings.”
Logos: African Journal of Philosophy and Studies. Vol. 4,2021
http://www.africanjournalofphilosophy.com
5
The black woman is not restrained by the fact of this pejorative perception. She is not unaware of
the manner in which she is perceived by the white man. Fanon analyses her reaction to it which
manifests in ambivalence of trying to turn white into black and trying to turn black into white. In
the first instance, which represents the infantile stage in the development of the black woman, she
wants to make the white man black. Fanon demonstrates this desire with Mayotte Capécia’s
childhood attempt where she emptied an inkwell on the head of a white child. The appearance of
the child the next day, still retaining his white colour must have frustrated the black girl.
Fanon makes no reference of such desire to turn the white man black among adult black women.
Rather reference to turning whites black is made by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, & Helen Tiffin
(1995) who write that in inter-racial sex, the “sexual liaisons with ‘native’ peoples were supposed
to result in a contamination of the colonizers’ pure stock and thus their degeneracy and demise as
a vigorous and civilized (as opposed to savage or degenerate) race.” This process aims to bring the
colonizer down to the level of the colonized. A sexual encounter in this case makes him less human
too and makes him equal of the black person in a negative way.
But what use does it serve to degrade the white man. The best alternative is to elevate oneself. A
mature Mayotte Capécia’s understands this and expresses it in her desire: “I should have liked to
be married, but to a white man.” From Fanon’s own analysis it is clear that Mayotte Capécia loves
a white man with whom she has gone into a relationship. But her love is not pure. It is a utilitarian
love that seeks to take from the white man that which he denies people of Capécia’s race. Her love
seeks to appropriate as it gives. What does she want to appropriate from the white man? It is his
whiteness which expresses his humanity, his personhood. The Negro woman wants to be white. It
is only in being so that she can be human.
In a context where whiteness is defined to be human the black person who engages in a sexual
liaison with a white person hopes to become white, and therefore human, by the mere mixing of
his sexual fluid with that of a white person. Fanon explains the way this thinking works in a black
man.
I want to be acknowledged not as black but as white… Who but a white woman
can do this for me? By loving me she proves that I am worthy of white love. I am
loved like a white man. Her love takes me onto the noble road that leads to total
realization… I marry white culture, white beauty, white whiteness. When my
restless hands caress those white breasts, they grasp white civilization and dignity
and make them mine. (Fanon, 2008, 45).
Indeed, the question is not about how to affect the skin colour of the black person through sexual
engagement with a white person. Since wealth is associated with whiteness, a person who has
wealth is white. What the black who seeks amorous relationship with a white person wants is the
elevation of his social status, a departure from his peasant status to a higher social rank. The white
man brings his wealth and his status, and since she is his partner the wealth and the status rob off
on him.
The question suggests itself now to us: to what extent does the black person who engages in a
sexual relationship with a white person succeed, by virtue of that act in affecting his or her identity?
Logos: African Journal of Philosophy and Studies. Vol. 4,2021
http://www.africanjournalofphilosophy.com
6
This question is very important to Fanon, for an answer to it is necessary if he must proceed in his
quest for the authentic route to the human identity of the black person. He writes that no matter
how many times a white man went to bed with a black woman: “… there was undoubtedly no
tendency on his part to respect her entity as another person.” Fanon hid this answer in a footnote.
The Negro fails partially, and succeeds partially. She succeeds on the other part where she is
recognized by her fellow Negroes who now regard her as a white person. But this is not really
important. What is important is the recognition by the Other, the white man. This is not possible.
So she fails, and this failure explains the futility of the chosen route.
Fanon sees the adoption of this route to authentic identity as a result of neurotic disorder
engendered by the nature of colonial environment. The black man who seeks to enhance his
identity by seeking to become white is a victim of inferiority complex instilled in him by
colonialism. What he suffers is a mental disorder that induces him to run away from himself.
Fanon also considers the ethical implication of what the black person who seeks to regain his
identity as a human person does when he relies on his relationship with a white person to elevate
himself. The white man is already in error for colonizing the black man and for turning him into
an object. Fanon’s analysis and rejection of this as route to authentic identity is rooted in his
adoption of the Kantian imperative: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or
in that of any other, always as an end, never merely as a means.” The black man who hopes to
upgrade his identity through his sexual relationship with a black woman has not treated that woman
as a being of dignity, an end in herself. He becomes guilty of the same offence with which the
white man is charged. This point, too, makes this route a fruitless one.
History
The second false route to restoring African identity is history. Early African writers were led into
proving their humanity through an effort to counter Hegel’s postulation that the African is not a
historical being. From Hegel’s conception, history represents great achievements and man’s effort
to reshape the world, and move it farther away from the frontiers of nature. He later points at some
great achievements of certain nations as proof of their historic nature. The English, for instance,
would point at their maritime prowess as proof of their achievements as a people. What concrete
proof has the African to point at as proof of his humanity? For Hegel, the answer is nothing.
The 20th century threw up a number of African responses to such views as expressed by the German
philosopher. For such African writers like John Jackson, Leopold Senghor, and Cheik Anta Diop,
Hegel’s view above and others similar to it were as a result of distortion of history which followed
European colonization of mankind, world scholarship, and writings. According to John Henrik
Clarke, the European colonization of the world was a process that ensured writing or re-writing of
history in order to portray the Europeans as the major, if not the only creators of civilization.
Setting the widely accepted Egyptian civilization as their foundation, African writers seek to prove
that what is regarded as Egyptian civilization was indeed black man’s civilization and not the
product of Europe and Asia as postulated by Hegel. Senghor was one of the earliest pioneers of
this view as he asserted that Negro blood circulated in the veins of ancient Egyptians.
Thus, in what Oguejiofor (2002) regards as a restoration project meant to regain what was lost or
to bring to light what was swept underground on the assumption of the backwardness of Africa the
Logos: African Journal of Philosophy and Studies. Vol. 4,2021
http://www.africanjournalofphilosophy.com
7
Africans attempt to show that the intellectual and cultural materials which the ancient Greeks
borrowed from Egypt were indeed black African invention. Proponents give reasons to prove that
Greek philosophy and civilization, the development of language, writing, discovery of other
continents, have African imprints in them. D. A. Masolo’s effort is new. Masolo departs from the
practice of tracing the source of Greek philosophy to ancient Egypt but goes a step forward to
show that there were African contemporaries of ancient Greco-Roman philosophers. Masolo
compiles a list that includes such figures as Augustine, Origen, Plotinus, Hypatia, and so on.
.
Fanon gazes at such efforts that seek to restore the identity of the black person as a human person
and poses the question: “Was this our salvation?” When Fanon provides an answer to his own
question he seems to say that the denial of the humanity the black person suffers is an exercise that
takes place in the present. He regards it as a futile effort to recoil to the past in order to foster an
identity of the present. In the argument of Fanon, other peoples of the world do not rely on their
past achievements in order to prove their contribution to the development of the world. Rather,
they point at concrete achievements that are made to solve today’s problems. The focus of today’s
African intellectuals should be to enthrone a continent that is able to contribute its own quota in
the present movement of history.
Lay aside your history, your investigations of the past, and try to feel yourself into
our rhythm. In a society such as ours, … what matters now is no longer playing the
game of the world but subjugating it with integers and atoms. (Fanon, 2008, 100).
Fanon sees as particularly dangerous, Alione Diop’s position that upholds the inconsequentiality
of the concept of history as progress as far as the Negro is concerned. This shows Fanon’s complete
awareness of the debate between Afrocentric scholars and their Eurocentric counterparts. He
surmises that those who want to prove the humanity of the black man by recounting some great
deeds of his ancestors have lost the battle. Fanon’s position is understandable. If it is possible to
point out the great achievements of one’s ancestors as proof of the humanity of one’s race, what
concrete achievements can one point out today in order to continue to prove that the humanity of
one’s race has not slipped since one’s ancestors? For scholars like Alione Diop such exercise is of
no consequence and is indeed antithetical to the African spirit.
A proper awareness of the implication of such position as the above in the light of Darwinian
evolution must have informed Fanon’s classification of it as dangerous. Darwin speaks of
evolution in order to mark the progress of human development. Will pointing out great
achievements of the Negro’s ancestors without showing any contemporary replication of such
achievements not lead to questioning whether the evolved man has not regressed irretrievably in
the Negro? It is on this note that Fanon dismisses such exercise as seeks to hinge the human identity
of the Negro on the achievements of his ancestors.
Ethnocentrism
Anthropological studies of the 19th and 20th centuries were heavily influenced by the social
evolutionary thoughts of Karl Marx and Auguste Comte. Both Marx and Comte are reputed for
their gradation of human societies according to their level of technological advancement and
Logos: African Journal of Philosophy and Studies. Vol. 4,2021
http://www.africanjournalofphilosophy.com
8
scientific knowledge. Such gradation, with time, makes connection between developed societies
and civilized individuals. On the contrary, underdevelopment was linked to human primitivity,
and this influenced Lucien Levy-Bruhl to undertake a work which examined the manner of
thinking of the primitive men.
Placide Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy (1965) professes to correct such view about the Africans.
Tempels has set out to uphold the humanity of the African people but argues that despite their
humanity the Africans are hierarchically inferior to the Europeans. Most literature which
previously emphasized the inferiority of the Africans thrive in excluding the Africans from
belonging to the animal species of homo sapiens. JanMohamed traces an instance of this in the
writings of Dinesen which collapsed African natives into African animals. Tempels work seems
different in that the African is different from the European but such difference is qualitatively
different from that which exists between man and other animals.
It is on their possession of a peculiar system of thought, philosophy, that Tempels hinges his proof
of the humanity of Africans. He feels that the African is misunderstood as previous attempts to
study him have failed to unmask his thought system, a thought system he holds that the African is
incapable of developing without the aid of the European. Tempels then goes ahead to show what
he sees as the authentic understanding of the African thought system. He identifies the concept of
force as the key to understanding Bantu thought. For Tempels, the concept of force in African
world is what takes the place of the concept of being in western world. Force accounts for the
existence of all realities in the African world, and it is also the concept that expresses the nature of
all these realities, their existential relation, among others.
His effort to free the African from the stereotype prevalent in his days notwithstanding, Tempels
finds himself grading reality according to their positions in the hierarchy of forces. In such
gradation, God stands at the head as the primal force, uncaused by any but from whom all other
forces ensured. From God there is a hierarchical descent of force to spirits and divinities, ancestors,
living men, unborn children, animals, inanimate objects.
Fanon’s critique of Tempels’ Bantu Philosophy finds its place in this hierarchy of forces. Particular
exception is taken in the relationship between the African and the European. Tempels recognizes
the two of them as human species but holds that in the gradation of forces the European man and
the African man occupy the same category as men. However, in that category a proper gradation
of the two people places the European at the top of the ladder. Superior forces which the Europeans
are expected to assume exercise force and power against the inferior forces in that they, superior
forces, can regard the inferior forces as mere objects which can be harnessed for the strengthening
of the vital force of the superior force which the European is expected to be. When Fanon criticizes
Tempels’ position he goes straight to the heart of the matter and points out that such theory can be
used to justify the whole exercise of colonialism and colonial violence. In this case if the colonial
master uses violence against the black man it is justified because it still falls under the auspices of
increase and decrease of vital forces. Fanon dismisses the project of Bantu Philosophy as rubbish
and points out its tendency to substitute “the exploiter for the ontological relations of Forces… And
there is nothing ontological about segregation. Enough of this rubbish.”
Logos: African Journal of Philosophy and Studies. Vol. 4,2021
http://www.africanjournalofphilosophy.com
9
Another form of ethnocentrism is expressed in Negritude. Negritude differs from Placide Tempels’
effort because Tempels’ was the work of an European describing the African from the third person
point of view. Thus, despite the level of assimilation he claims he has attained among the Bemba
people, Tempels’s work remains the effort of an outsider. Negritude represents what we may call
a phenomenological account of the humanity of the Negro person. It views the African from the
first person perspective. More specifically, Negritude represents an attempt by the African to
account for his own ontology through the description of his own consciousness.
Negritude emerged as a philosophy of protest. David Caute presents the historicity of that protest
when he traces it to American occupation of Haiti which began in 1915. That occupation triggered
a protest by black intellectuals of Haitian origin who rejected western culture which the Americans
sought to impose on the black population. This led to their revival of African legends, proverbs
and music (Caute, 1970).
This protest was to form the cornerstone of what later came to be known as Negritude, a movement
that was inspired among the French speaking Africans by Aime Cesaire, Leopold Senghor and
Leon Damas. From the point of view of this discourse, Negritude was an attempt by black
intellectuals to foster their human identity from the perspective of ethnocentrism. Proponents seem
to have internalized the stereotypical appellation imposed on the black men by European theorists
of white superiority. They accepted the fact of white and black division emphasizing that white
men are not in any way superior to black men.
In his conceptualization of the term, Negritude, Senghor describes it as “… a certain way of being
human, above all of living as a human.” Sylvia Ba (1970) identifies the nature of ethnocentrism
inherent in Negritude when he writes that Leopold Sedar Senghor, the Senegalese soul of
Negritude conceives Negritude as “.. the affirmation of a specific psychophysiology proper to the
black man.” Senghor expresses this psychophysiology in his famous attempt to distinguish
between African mode of being from European mode of being, between African mode of knowing
from European mode of knowing.
Senghor furnishes this difference in his notorious remark that “… emotion is Negro as reason is
Greek.” (Senghor, cited in Ba, 1973).
Fanon’s was one of the earliest critiques of Negritude. He has provided the plank on which
succeeding critics built. He begins his critique of Negritude by stating at once that the
ethnocentrism which Negritude intends to actualize was entirely impossible.
I wanted to be typically Negro—it was no longer possible… And, when I tried, on
the level of ideas and intellectual activity, to reclaim my Negritude, it was snatched
away from me. Proof was presented that my effort was only a term in the
dialectic. (Fanon, 2008, 101).
The reference to Negritude as a term in the dialectic refers to the manner of presentation of
Negritude as always a response to Europe and its view of the African. This indeed is the view of
Sartre who feels that Negritude comes into the dialectical machine as a minor term. This makes it
to be dependent on a major term which is more foundational to it. It presents Africa as only existing
Logos: African Journal of Philosophy and Studies. Vol. 4,2021
http://www.africanjournalofphilosophy.com
10
because there is an Europe that exists elsewhere. Peter S. Thompson explores the implications of
this. He writes that it means: “… that blackness only exists in opposition to whiteness, and that
Africanness-to whatever extent it exists-will have a common destiny with Europe.”
Conclusion
Colonialism is basically a dehumanizing exercise that objectifies the colonized. The Kantian
postulation that man is to be treated as end in himself and never as an object does not apply to the
colonized. To the colonizer, the colonized is an object whose value is instrumental for the
attainment of something more valuable. In this sense the colonized is turned into a thing, an object.
Fanon has shown how this practice of objectifying the black person impugns on his identity as the
human person and ascribes to him an animal identity. The black person is reduced to the same
level as animals and made to bear in his person the burden of animalhood. If to be an animal
equates being stupid, base, and senseless, then the black person is stupid, base and senseless.
How does the black person react to this mode of identification? He recognizes himself as a subject
of rules on account of his rationality. He knows within himself that he is a human person, that the
only problem which he suffers is the violation of his personhood, and he is convinced that nothing
is defined from the point of its violation or perversion. A correct definition of man cannot define
man from the perspective of a dead human person. In the black person’s understanding, a colonized
person is a violated person, a person perverted and determined by social conditions which prevail
around him. Fanon notes this point when he writes that the black person is the creation of the white
man. This understanding calls forth some form of effort from the black person to restore himself
to the level of being human, to assert his humanity. In paper attempts are made to capture the
various efforts, as treated by Frantz Fanon, which the colonized Africans made in order to restore
their battered identity. Fanon shows how defective and inadequate these efforts were.
References
Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., and Tiffin, H. (1995). (eds.), The Post-Colonial Reader.
London and New York: Routledge.
Ba, S. (1973). The Concept of Negritude in the Poetry of Leopold Sedar Senghor,
Princeton: Princeton University Press
Belloc, H. (1898). The Modern Traveller. London: E. Arnold
Caute, D. (1970). Fanon. London: Fontana/Collins
Fanon, F. (2008). Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press.
Fanon, F. (2004). The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin.
Logos: African Journal of Philosophy and Studies. Vol. 4,2021
http://www.africanjournalofphilosophy.com
11
JanMohamed, A. R. (1985). The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial
Difference in Colonialist Literature. Critical Inquiry, 12(1), 59–87
Jinaudu, L. A. (1976). “Language and Politics: On the Cultural Basis of
Colonialism,” Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 16, pp. 603-614
Loomba, A. (1998). Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London and New York:
Routledge.
Oguejiofor. J. O. (2002). Philosophy and the African Predicament. Ibadan: Hope
Publications.
Porter, R. (1987). A Social History of Madness. London: Penguin
Said, E. (1994). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books