The paper “The meaning of Frantz Fanon's idea 'the lived experience of the black man'” discusses the meaning of the idea “the lived experience of the black man” of the great Martinique philosopher and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon that is articulated in chapter 5 of his first book Black Skin, White Masks. The purpose of the discourse is to understand how Fanon's discussion of the racial issues transcends itself giving the opportunity to understand the lived experience of all colonized subjects, such as women, people of color, non-western cultures. It shows this by comparing Fanon's ideas to the ideas of woman's oppression by Simone de Beauvoir and intersectional ideas of the mestiza consciousness, borderland identity by Gloria Anzaldúa. This means that it will try to persuade the audience that Fanon's discussion of the Black experience has high symbolic meaning, because by Black person we can understand any oppressed subject not just attached to her race specificity.

Frantz Fanon offers a lucid account of his entrance into the white world where the weightiness of the ‘white gaze’ nearly crushed him. In chapter five of Black Skins, White Masks, he develops his historico-racial and epidermal racial schemata as correctives to Merleau-Ponty’s overly inclusive corporeal schema. Experientially aware of the reality of socially constructed (racialized) subjectivities, Fanon uses his schemata to explain the creation, maintenance, and eventual rigidification of white-scripted ‘blackness’. Through a re-telling of his own experiences of racism, Fanon is able to show how a black person in a racialized context eventually internalizes the ‘white gaze’. In this essay I bring Fanon’s insights into conversation with Foucault’s discussion of panoptic surveillance. Although the internalization of the white narrative creates a situation in which external constraints are no longer needed, Fanon highlights both the historical contingency of ‘blackness’ and the ways in which the oppressed can re-narrate their subjectivities. Lastly, I discuss Fanon’s historically attuned ‘new humanism’, once again engaging Fanon and Foucault as dialogue partners.

During his short life, Frantz Fanon was engaged in questions about psychiatry, philosophy, race and colonization, and through his experience as a practicing psychiatrist, political activist and author, he wrote two major works, Black Skin White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1963), which have been largely influential in the field of Postcolonial studies. In the fifth chapter of his book Black Skin White Masks, Fanon describes the relationship between the colonizer and colonized, and the psychological impact of colonization on the colonized. Through an intimate description of his meeting with the French oppressor, he brings the reader into a journey of his experience as a black man, and draws a picture over the feeling of dehumanization, humiliation and identity crisis. The fifth chapter portrays the transformation of his identity through his meeting with the white man in France, which made him realize that the very fact of his blackness makes him inferior. His personal and detailed description of the process from realizing that he is different to the point of accepting his difference can be compared to a process of grief. In this case, the grief over his loss of identity the way he knew it. In this essay, I analyze Black Skin White Masks' fifth chapter, The Lived Experience of the Black Man, by linking it to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler's Five Stages of Loss, a model that describes the different processes of grief over loss and death. I conclude that Fanon's description of his identity crisis has a strong resemblance to the five stages of loss.

I will argue in this paper that the Black radical tradition needs to become fully conscious of it-self in order frame a radical black studies alterity perspective within the Black radical tradition (King, 2007; Robinson, 1983/2000). First, I will provide a quick historical development of the Black Radical tradition through Robinson’s Black Marxism, where he traces the Black radical tradition from the 16th century to the present. Second, this will take us to the 1960s-1960s of transnationalism, and anti-imperialism of black freedom fighters Claudia Jones, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, Aime Cesaire, Angela Davis, George Jackson, Huey Newton, Malcolm X, MLK Jr, and how this time was an opportune time for both black, natives and the global take advantage of that moment. I will utilize Wynter’s and Weheliye’s work to understand how black studies came to be and the possibilities it presented us and why its essential to a black centric episteme . Third, I will intervene on the debates about Afro-Pessimism and where it stands in the pantheon of black critical thought. Making concessions that the scholarly works of Frank Wilderson III and Jared Sexton rejuvenated younger peoples interest in Africana Studies, Black Studies and Critical social theory, and infused different interpretation of Fanon, nonetheless Afro-Pessimism I argue is a misinterpretation, of Frantz Fanon work in totality, and misrecognition agency and relationality in his writing. Thereby, limiting the truly radical possibility of using a pessimist reading of the universe. We should look to Wynter’s and Gordon’s Fanon, rather than the “political ontology” of Agamben reading of Fanon in Wilkerson’s III, and Sexton work. Last, but not least, and I will attempt to also undo the abuse of the colonial order that by looking at Wynter’s Black studies alterity perspective pedagogy to understand do we as black people along with red, Latino and native people of the world bring a closure to the current episteme? To concertize our discussion of Black studies I will use Joyce E. King’s (2007) work of “Critical Studyin’” which ties together all the critical ideas in this paper into a comprehensive framework from the position of the liminal. How did we get here? Why is fanon and Wynter important to understand the situation we are in currently? Why black studies? These questions and answers are grounded in a black studies perspective. This is grounded in the sociocultural and historical experience of the liminality of African-descent people (King, 2006). As intellectuals, we have a role to play, just as we have done in the past by being on the ground by articulating a order by creating new cultural codes aside of the natural biological ones that exist. Agreeing with Wynter “Black Studies is really in the forefront of the battle against ‘Man’ and for the human, and to begin to put it forward in that re-conception.

Existing leaders just use the same template that colonial rulers employed previously. The difference is that, instead of occurring at a transnational level, exploitation has scaled down to the intra-state level in Africa (as certain individuals in high positions live off the land-and its people-while the masses live in poverty). However, it is the duty of the oppressed to remove these shackles, both physically and mentally. As Wood (2004:54) states “how we are thrown into the world is not within our control. Each of us does, however, have some control over what we do with our throwness.” West (2010:111) reiterates this view point by saying that “human beings are free to make or remake themselves. They do not simply fulfill a predetermined essence as, it seems, plants or animals must do. If human beings embrace their freedom, they have the possibility of an authentic existence.” In light of the above, the main goal of this paper is to critically analyse Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin, White Masks.” More specifically, this paper will deal with his views on language and his psychoanalysis of the relations that take place between black and white people (and between black and black people). The first section of this paper will entail a brief historical overview of his life. The purpose of this is to shed some light on any events that might have shaped his writing or the ideas he put forth. The second section will deal with his work (in the way that was outlined above). A succinct conclusion shall be provided in the end with the purpose of summing up the essay. The sources used to undertake this task were books, journals and the internet.