Human Studies

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-020-09543-6

THEORETICAL / PHILOSOPHICAL PAPER

When Body Image Takes over the Body Schema: The Case

of Frantz Fanon

Yochai Ataria1 · Shogo Tanaka2

© Springer Nature B.V. 2020

Abstract
Body image (BI) and body schema (BS) refer to two different yet closely related
systems. Whereas BI can be defined as a system of perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs
pertaining to one’s own body, BS is a system of sensory-motor capacities that func-
tions without awareness or the necessity of perceptual monitoring. Studies have
demonstrated that applying the concepts of BI and BS enables us to conceptualize
complex pathological phenomena such as anorexia, schizophrenia, and depersonali-
zation. Likewise, it has further been argued that these concepts play a crucial role
in our ability to grasp our bodily experiences in the socio-cultural world accord-
ing to various factors, such as gender, social class, and ethnicity. Referring to the
insights of Frantz Fanon, the author of Black Skin, White Masks, this paper suggests
that under certain conditions the BI can take over and reshape the BS (or the BI is
assimilated into the BS). Based on an examination of Fanon’s writings, the paper
suggests that not only the BI can truly remold the BS but that the gaze of the other
can directly influence the BI.

Keywords  Frantz Fanon · Body schema · Body image · Racism · Sartre

We take parts of the body-images of others into others, and push parts of our
body-images into others. We may push our own body-images completely into
others, or in some way there may be a continuous interplay between the body-

Yochai Ataria and Shogo Tanaka have contributed equally to this work.

* Yochai Ataria
Yochai.ataria@gmail.com
Shogo Tanaka
shg.tanaka@gmail.com
1
Tel-Hai College, Upper Galilee, Israel
2
Tokai University, Tokyo, Japan

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 Y. Ataria, S. Tanaka

images of ourselves and the persons around us. This interplay may be an inter-
play of parts or of wholes. (Schilder, 1935/1950: 235)

Introduction

Body image (BI) and body schema (BS) are two different yet closely related systems.
However, scholars disagree regarding the exact relationship between these systems. For
instance, Pitron and de Vignemont raise the following questions:
Are the body image and the body schema then somehow reshaping each other or
are they relatively independent and do they only happen to be congruent?… To
what extent do they communicate with each other? … And if they are congruent,
how can we know that actions are guided by the body schema only, and that the
body image does not contribute to their guidance? (2017: 115, emphasis added)
This paper argues that BS and BI are different systems engaged in an ongoing dialogue
and that the direction of influence is not one way—the BI is governed by the BS—
but rather, at least in some cases, the BI takes over the BS. In order to establish these
claims, this paper draws on the writings of Frantz Fanon (1925–1961). Indeed, Fanon’s
life and experiences exemplify how BI and BS interact in an extreme manner under
social tensions.
Fanon was raised in the French colony of Martinique. He became a professional psy-
chiatrist and trained in the European psychiatric system after the Second World War.
Fundamentally, as the title of his book indicates, he lived with Black Skin, White Masks
(Fanon 2008); indeed, in his writings Fanon considers the meaning of being a black
body in the racially-charged environment. Essentially, Fanon does not describe this
racial environment in general terms but rather delves deep into the most basic structure
of the lived-body. In so doing, he not only grasps but also describes from within how it
feels to be a black person in the white world. Based on Fanon’s insights regarding his
own lived-body, we examine the relationship between BS and BI and, more specifi-
cally, argue that under certain conditions the BI is assimilated and integrated into the
BS.
The next section distinguishes between BS and BI from a cognitive-phenomeno-
logical point of view, followed by a detailed discussion of the notion of BI, introduc-
ing Jean-Paul Sartre’s approach to it. Subsequently, we present Fanon’s insights into
the lived-body, demonstrating that under certain conditions the BI reshapes the BS. In
the final part of this paper, we discuss Fanon’s insights in a more generalized context,
suggesting that (a) BI can be influenced directly by the other’s gaze and (b) in radical
cases, the BI can take over the BS.

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Body Schema (BS) Versus Body Image (BI)

Body Schema: The Body as a Pre‑reflective Subject

We perceive the world through our bodies: in Merleau-Ponty’s words, the “body
is inescapably linked with phenomena” (2002: 354). To rephrase this notion, the
body is “our general medium for having a world” (2002: 169). While it is well
known that a figure-background structure stands at the very core of perceptual
experiences, this structure works not only in perceiving a certain object in the
world but also in general perceptual experiences (Dreyfus 2017). When the per-
ceived world is the focus of our attention, the perceiving body remains in the
background. Thus, the general condition of the body shapes how we perceive the
world (Ataria, in press a).
Merleau-Ponty (2002) further claims that the process of perceiving objects is
accomplished via bodily processes: “The synthesis of the object is here effected,
then, through the synthesis of one’s own body” (2002: 238). Indeed, Merleau-
Ponty famously notes that “the theory of the body schema is, implicitly, a theory
of perception” (2002: 239), implying that we perceive the world through changes
in our BS (note that this sentence uses dualistic language, there is no I that OWNs
the body schema). In the current context of neurocognitive science, BS is gener-
ally considered the neural and/or mental representation of one’s own body within
the brain (de Vignemont 2010, 2018; Paillard 2005; Tsakiris et al. 2010). While
accepting the contemporary neurophysiological research, Merleau-Ponty devel-
oped in his own unique way the concept of BS from a phenomenological view-
point of being-in-the-world, which he inherited from Heidegger (1996). Primar-
ily, according to Merleau-Ponty, the BS is an implicit function of coordinating
the body parts into a unified action toward the environment. In skillful actions,
such as riding a bicycle, catching a flying ball, and dancing with someone, the
BS organizes an action by coordinating the body parts corresponding to ongoing
changes in the environment. In other words, the BS is embedded in the sensori-
motor loops activated between body and the surrounding environment (Dreyfus
2017).
In this regard, it is possible to say that the BS is the function which constitutes us as
pre-reflective subjects in the world; it enables us to move and act in the world almost
automatically. Indeed, without conscious considerations, we can move; control our
body effortlessly; forget that we have a body; and decide to do something and simply
execute our wishes, without any awareness of the process via which this is achieved.
When the body schema functions properly, the body remains in the background and
the world appears to us as the foreground of conscious attention. As long as the body
serves as the background, we feel comfortable with our body; we have confidence that
our body will react appropriately in a range of situations, even unfamiliar ones. In the
end, we feel at home in our body, with a slight awareness that this body is our own.
As was noted above, in ordinary cases of perception and action the body does not
appear as the contents of our conscious experience, that is to say that our body is
not the focus of our attention but rather shapes how we act in the world and how we

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perceive the world. The objects of perception and action are the primary contents of
our conscious experience. In line with this argument, Gallagher (2005) emphasizes the
prenoetic character of the BS. “Prenoetic” means the operation of consciousness that is
normally implicit yet in essence allows us to perceive the world. Thus, the BS operates
in a prenoetic rather than a noetic manner.
It has further been suggested (Ratcliffe 2015, 2017) that the prenoetic character of
the BS affects our ability to feel at-home within the world. As long as the BS functions
properly, we smoothly engage in actions toward and within the world, and the percep-
tion of the environment is also incorporated into a geared interaction between the body
and the world.

Body Image: The Body as an Object

Based on an analysis of various pathological cases, Gallagher discerns a double dis-

sociation between BI on the one hand and BS on the other: “It is possible… to find
cases in which a subject has an intact body image but a dysfunctional body schema,
and vice versa” (2005: 24). Gallagher further argues that in some cases of unilateral
neglect, a neuropsychological condition involving a deficit in attention to and aware-
ness of one side of space following damage to one brain hemisphere, we can detect
evidence of an intact BS together with the absence of a BI. In one such case, the
patient pays no attention to the left side of the body and fails to dress her left side,
although there is no motor weakness on that side (Denny-Brown et al. 1952).1
We can also observe cases indicating the opposite: BS defects have no effect on
the BI. The most notable case is that of IW, reported by Cole and Paillard (1995)
and analyzed in phenomenological detail by Gallagher and Cole (1995). IW lost
proprioception and the sense of touch from the neck down. Accordingly, it became
impossible for him to maintain postures or move his body implicitly: the BS almost
completely ceased to function. After a rehabilitation process, however, IW was once
again able to walk, eat, write letters, and even drive a car—yet, even today, more
than 30 years later, he cannot perform any of these actions automatically. IW moves
his body by visually focusing on the related body parts and conceptualizing the
movements in advance, that is, by way of the BI.
In sharp contrast to the borderless relationship between body and world that is
characteristic of the BS, when perceiving the body in-itself as an object, the body
takes center stage in the perceptual field and the (short-term) BI occupies our atten-
tion. Criticizing the confusing usage of the terms BS and BI, Gallagher distinguishes
these two concepts in an appropriate manner.2 Whereas, the BS “is a system of
1
  There is an ongoing debate regarding whether neglect really demonstrates clear-cut double dissociation
between BS and BI (de Vignemont 2018).
2
  The concepts of both BS and BI have a long history. As is well known, the first English translation
of Phenomenology of Perception, published in 1962, translated the French term “schéma corporel” as
“body image”. This conceptual confusion mainly derives from early twentieth century neurology, in
which scholars argued about the nature of neural representation of the body. As Gallagher (1986, 2005)
also highlighted, the neurologist Paul Schilder (1935) generated confusion with regard to the use of these
concepts. On the one hand Schilder inherited the usage of “body schema” referring to postural cognition
from the studies of Head and Holmes (1911), but on the other hand he equated this concept with “the
picture of our own body which we form in our mind,” (1935:11) that is, body image.

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sensory-motor capacities that function without awareness or the necessity of percep-

tual monitoring” (2005: 24), Gallagher stresses that the BI “consists of a complex
set of intentional states and dispositions—perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes—in
which the intentional object is one’s own body” (2005: 25). Roughly speaking, the
BI contains three aspects, through which we experience our own bodies as objects
of (a) perception, (b) belief, and (c) emotional attitude.

(a) Perception: BI is comprised of the perceptual experiences of one’s own body.

For example, we visually perceive our own body from an outer and third-person
perspective when looking at ourselves in the mirror. This perceptual experience
helps us to revise our BI according to the current state of the body.
(b) Beliefs: BI includes the conceptual understanding of the body in general. In rela-
tion to this point, we can refer to the case of autotopagnosia: patients are unable
to localize their body parts, whether cued by verbal or visual inputs (Buxbaum
and Coslett 2001). The semantic map of the body is intertwined with visual
representation of the body, and both constitute one’s BI.
(c) Emotional attitude: BI includes the subject’s emotional (either positive or nega-
tive) attitude toward his/her own body. In most western societies, for example, to
recognize oneself as overweight elicits feelings of dissatisfaction towards one’s
own body, because being overweight is linked to negative impressions such as
laziness, lack of willpower, and lack of control (Grogan 2008).

Whereas BS constitutes us as a pre-reflective subject (e.g., prenoetic character),

the BI “involves a form of reflexive or self-referential intentionality” (Gallagher
2005: 25). On the level of BI, the body is well-defined as an object with a rela-
tively clear boundary. Note that although the BI cannot be reduced to one’s biologi-
cal boundaries (one’s skin, we may say), neither does it merge into the surrounding
world.

One Step Further: The Third Ontological Dimension of the Body

Let us take the notion of BI a step further. It seems that the BI includes a specific
aspect of what Sartre (1956) referred to as “the third ontological dimension of the
body”. According to Sartre, the lived body can be sorted into three dimensions. The
first is one’s own body, directly lived from within by the self: “I exist my body”
(1956: 460). In our discussion, this first dimension loosely corresponds to the BS,
which constitutes the self as a pre-reflective subject. The second is my body that
is “utilized and known by the Other” (Sartre 1956: 460), in simple terms this sec-
ond dimension can be defined as “my body is utilized by the other (and utilized
by myself occupying the role of third-person observer of my body)” (Moran 2009:
44 emphasis added). In Sartre’s third ontological dimension, however, “I exist for
myself as a body known by the Other” (1956: 460). According to Moran, in “this
ontological dimension, I experience my own body not on my own, but as reflected in
the experience of it by others” (2009: 44, emphasis added).

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In general, the BI corresponds to one’s own body as it one perceives, conceptu-

alizes, or emotionally reacts to it as an object. However, the same body is experi-
enced as an object not only for oneself but also for others. The other’s subjectivity
becomes salient through the experience of one’s own body: "With the appearance
of the Other’s look I experience the revelation of my being-as-object" (Sartre 1956:
351).
I experience my body as a perceivable object for myself. However, at the same
time, it is perceived as an object by the other: "One’s own eyes and those of others
thus become the tool of the body-image intercourse" (Schilder 1935: 237f., emphasis
added). Indeed, when another person stares at my body out of curiosity, I experience
an acute awareness of being exposed to another’s gaze through my body. This can
subsequently arouse diverse emotions such as shame, vanity, and anxiety. Bearing
this in mind, let us take examine how Sartre describes an experience of shame:
Shame therefore realizes an intimate relation of myself to myself. Through
shame I have discovered an aspect of my being… shame is not originally a
phenomenon of reflection… I have just made an awkward or vulgar gesture.
This gesture clings to me; I neither judge it nor blame it. I simply live it. I real-
ize it in the mode of for-itself. But now suddenly I raise my head. Somebody
was there and has seen me. Suddenly I realize the vulgarity of my gesture, and
I am ashamed…. But the Other is the indispensable mediator between myself
and me. I am ashamed of myself as I appear to the Other. By the mere appear-
ance of the Other, I am put in the position of passing judgment on myself as on
an object, for it is as an object that I appear to the Other. (Sartre 1956: 221f.,
emphasis added)
An experience of shame does not require reflection—at least not in a strong sense.
As is evidenced by this example, it is an almost automatic bodily as well as mental
response to noticing that my behavior is being perceived by the other. In addition,
according to Sartre, at the core of this experience lies the unknowability of the oth-
er’s mind in the sense that I am never able to grasp in its exact form how the other
perceives and evaluates me. Thus, on the one hand, I experience the other’s gaze as
subjectivity other than mine, which can perceive and evaluate my behaviors. Yet, on
the other hand, the other’s subjectivity appears to me as an unknowable being (or
even A-Thing) beyond his/her gaze. Even though it is an experience through my own
body, my body-as-object escapes from me into the realm of otherness. The other’s
gaze appears in two ways: At the pre-reflective level, I experience it as the subjectiv-
ity of the other who perceives me and evaluates me in a socially coded manner. At
the reflective level, I experience it as the subjectivity of the other which is beyond
my exact knowing.
All in all, we may say that the body-as-object and the BI become a place of inter-
subjectivity between the self and the other (Tanaka, 2018). Here, looking and being
looked at, perceiving and being perceived, evaluating and being evaluated encoun-
ter each other. Therefore, it becomes the place of intersubjective negotiation related
to social tension between the self and the other. With this in mind, let us explore
Fanon’s writings.

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Fanon’s Insights

Given the nature of Fanon’s writings, it is essential to understand how his ideas
and bodily-lived experiences are intertwined, creating insights that move far
beyond pure phenomenology, on the one hand, and simple testimony, on the
other. Bearing that in mind, let us examine some of his descriptions:
And then the occasion arose when I had to meet the white man’s eyes. An
unfamiliar weight burdened me. The real world challenged my claims. In
the white world the man of color encounters difficulties in the development
of his bodily schema. Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activ-
ity. It is a third person consciousness. The body is surrounded by an atmos-
phere of certain uncertainty. I know that if I want to smoke, I shall have
to reach out my right arm and take the pack of cigarettes lying at the other
end of the table. The matches, however, are in the drawer on the left, and I
shall have to lean back slightly. And all these movements are made not out
of habit but out of implicit knowledge. A slow composition of my self as a
body in the middle of a spatial and temporal world—such seems to be the
schema. It does not impose itself on me; it is, rather, a definitive structuring
of the self and of the world—definitive because it creates a real dialectic
between my body and the world…. (2008: 83, emphasis added)
Fanon’s portrayal sheds unique light on the fact that “body image and body
schema refer to two different but closely related systems” (Gallagher 2005: 24).
In the above passage, Fanon begins to describe his experience with the words,
I had to meet the white man’s eyes. An unfamiliar weight burdened me. At this
point, his description is focused on the level of the BI, especially on Sartre’s third
ontological dimension of the body. The difficulty lies in how we experience our-
selves through the look of the other, whose gaze transforms us into a pure object.
According to Fanon, when this encounter occurs between black and white peo-
ple (under certain circumstances) the black person’s body is objectified in a one-
sided manner, because “the black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes
of the white man” (2008: 83, emphasis added).
Fanon later depicts impairment on a much more basic level, at the level of the
BS. First, he states that a man of color encounters difficulties in the development
of his bodily schema, subsequently adding that he experiences a definitive struc-
turing of the self and of the world—definitive because it creates a real dialectic
between my body and the world… Both these descriptions depict impairment at
the BS level—in that sense, Fanon acts somewhat similarly to IW, that is, on the
level of the BI alone: I know that if I want to smoke, I shall have to reach out my
right arm and take the pack of cigarettes lying at the other end of the table. He
must consider the detailed procedures of the movement, as IW does in his mind.
Whereas in the first stage Fanon describes how he manages himself in the
world on the level of BI, in the second stage the BI begins to absorb the BS.
Indeed, Fanon depicts a process via which the BS is completely assimilated by
the BI: Then, assailed at various points, the corporeal schema crumbled, its

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 Y. Ataria, S. Tanaka

place taken by a racial epidermal schema (2008: 84, emphasis added). What he
coins “racial epidermal schema” is the body image forced onto him by white peo-
ple’s gazes.
It seems that certain unique conditions are necessary in order for the BI to take
over the BS so entirely. Arguing in favor of interaction between the BI and BS is
not innovative whatsoever yet, in most cases, it is not a real dynamic situation but
rather one-way in direction, BS → BI: “The body schema has some primacy over the
body image” (Pitron et al. 2018: 352, emphasis added). However, Fanon’s insights
demonstrate that, at the very least in certain situations, the BI takes over the BS. It
appears that the most basic condition for this process to take place is a hostile envi-
ronment (Ataria 2016a, b; 2018; 2019a, b; Ataria (in press b); Ataria and Somer
2013; Ataria and Gallagher 2015) wherein one has no place to hide from the oth-
er’s burning gaze, “I am being dissected under white eyes, the only real eyes I am
fixed… slip into corners, I remain silent, I strive for anonymity, for invisibility. Look,
I will accept the lot, as long as no one notices me!” (2008: 87f., emphasis added).
In this situation, one’s body is experienced in terms of negation, it becomes an una-
voidable obstacle, Ataria (2015); Arieli and Ataria (2018), even a curse: “The mis-
erable Negro to whiten himself and thus to throw off the burden of that corporeal
malediction” (2008: 84, emphasis added). The individual is reduced to appearance,
and only appearance, from the outside: “I am given no chance. I am overdetermined
from without. I am the slave not of the ‘idea’ that others have of me but of my own
appearance” (2008: 87, emphasis added).
Note that in this situation, space is redefined in terms of the BI—the body is sur-
rounded by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty. In our daily life, we are thrown
into the world from an egocentric perspective through our BS, yet in this hostile-
racial environment space is experienced by the BI in a distorted manner via multi-
ple allocentric perspectives:”In the train it was no longer a question of being aware
of my body in the third person but in a triple person. In the train I was given not
one but two, three places… I occupied space” (Fanon 2008: 84, emphasis added).
The space is no longer inhabited by the BS. That said, please note that according to
Merleau-Ponty at the level of BS we are part of space: "Our body is not primarily in
space: it is of it" (2002: 171). Furthermore, when the BS fails to function, as in IW’s
case, one finds it hard to perform the simplest tasks: to walk, to navigate oneself in
space: “It was not that I was finding febrile coordinates in the world” (Fanon 2008:
84). Indeed, we saw that the BS is embedded in the sensorimotor loops, yet, in turn,
when these sensorimotor loops fail to function one loses balance and develops “nau-
sea…” (2008: 84). This situation can be described in terms of knowing-how (KH)
and knowing-that (KT). According to Ryle (1949) we cannot define KH in terms
of KT because KH precedes KT. Therefore, an individual may be familiar with the
rules of riding a bicycle—the information is present on the KT level—but, lacking
the KH knowledge, the individual is unable to actually ride a bicycle because practi-
cal knowledge is needed to do so.
Fanon describes a situation in which his engagement with the world is based on
the KT system alone. Concerning nausea, according to Ratcliffe, “The world as it is
experienced through nausea is not simply a place without purpose or function but a
place where purpose and function are no longer conceivable…” (2009: 7, emphasis

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added). With this in mind, it seems that nausea represents the failure of the BS and
KH systems to function, at least for some period of time, until they are rebuilt in
terms of BI: “The corporeal schema crumbled, its place taken by a racial epider-
mal schema” (Fanon 2008: 84, emphasis added). Previously we defined BI in terms
of perception, beliefs, and emotions toward one’s body, in this citation these char-
acteristics appear to occur on the level of the epidermal schema. If we accept this
notion, we must agree that the BS has been (almost) completely assimilated by the
BI: “Below the corporeal schema I had sketched a historico-racial schema” (2008:
84). The black person’s BS is captured by the negative BI accorded by white people.
Thus, the black person can no longer exist in the world with the original BS but
rather begins to experience the self (and the world) from white people’s perspective
alone; in this situation tension no longer exists between the white and the black, the
latter being dismissed by the former: “For not only must the black man be black;
he must be black in relation to the white man… The black man has no ontological
resistance in the eyes of the white man” (2008: 82f.).
Let us examine the situation of the black man, applying the concept of affordance.
Gibson (1979) defines affordance as “something that refers to both the environment
and the animal in a way that no existing term does. It implies the complementarity
of the animal and the environment”. Furthermore, he states, “the affordances of the
environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for
good or ill,” (1979: 127). Gibson emphasizes that "not only objects but also sub-
stances, places, events, other animals, and artifacts have affordances," and, therefore,
it is possible to "assume that affordances are not simply phenomenal qualities of
subjective experience… instead, they are ecological, in the sense that they are prop-
erties of the environment relative to an animal" (1982: 403f.). We can also describe
affordance in terms of potential for action: "Different layouts afford different behav-
iors for different animals, and different mechanical encounters” (Gibson 1979 p.
128). Yet, according to Gibson, we cannot reduce affordance to perception. Rather,
this refers to “the whole spectrum of social significance” (1979: 128). Moreover, as
Gallagher and Lindgren highlight, the concept of affordance can be defined in terms
of I-Can: "We perceive the world in terms of what we can do, that is, in terms of
its pragmatic meaning" (2015: 393). When our range of possibilities and the prag-
matic phenomenal field expressing the I-can decline, we feel incapable of almost
everything. Thus, the phenomenal field is transformed into an I-Cannot kind of field.
As such, things that were once within the field of affordance become unreachable,
inaccessible and unapproachable: the world no longer calls for action (Ataria, 2015;
2018; 2019b, in press a). As Ratcliffe (2008) argues, when the I-can horizon shrinks,
the sense of belonging to the world is radically modified and one no longer feels at-
home in the world.
It seems that in the case of Fanon, the I-Can structure changed radically: what the
black person can or cannot do is defined by the white man’s gaze. Based on Fanon’s
lived-experience, it is possible to suggest, so we believe, that the I-can/not structure
is reshaped by the BI, in other words, the BI reorganizes the affordance structure, in
practice that means that the white person’s gaze’ becomes part of the black person’s
sensorimotor loop, part of the KH structure. In turn, it shapes the field of affordance,
which, as we saw, is responsible for the entire spectrum of social significance. In

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that sense, the phenomenal field of the black person is restricted to the way it is
being perceived and shaped by whites. Thrown into this white world, the black per-
son cannot feel at home, structuring the black person’s field in terms of I-Cannot.
Let us, however, locate Fanon’s insights within a wider phenomenological context.
BS constitutes the self as a pre-reflective subject represented as the pronoun “I”. Sartre
also expressed this dimension as “I exist my body”. Normally, this self is constituted
as the “I” that perceives the world and acts in the world. However, when “I” encounter
the other in a social situation, the same “I” is perceived and evaluated as an object.
This aspect of the self is represented as the pronoun “me,” as Sartre used the expres-
sion of “me-as-object” in the context of the third ontological dimension. In this regard,
the body image is “me,” which is experienced as an object for myself as well as for the
other. Fanon describes a specific experience in which the “I” is captured and frozen
within the “me” that is being stared at and evaluated negatively by white people. At this
moment, the experience of “I” is overwhelmed by the “me” that is objectified by the
other. The black person’s “I” begins to exist in the world as the “me” designated to it by
white people. Fanon describes this experience as follows:
My body was given back to me sprawled out, distorted, recolored, clad in mourn-
ing in that white winter day. The Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro
is mean, the Negro is ugly; look, a nigger, it’s cold, the nigger is shivering, the
nigger is shivering because he is cold, the little boy is trembling because he is
afraid of the nigger, the nigger is shivering with cold, that cold that goes through
your bones, the handsome little boy is trembling because he thinks that the nigger
is quivering with rage…. (2008: 86)
The experience described here focuses on the body, but the perspective of experience
moves back and forth between the Negro and the little boy. Although Fanon writes my
body was given back to me, this body is not lived from within as “I” from the first-
person perspective. Rather, “I” am living this body from the perspective of the Negro
which was originally given by white people. The “me” took over this body and “me” is
living this body. Shivering/quivering/trembling is another bodily experience that occurs
when the body schema is assimilated by the body image.
As long as the body is maintained at the biological-physiological level, the funda-
mental ability to be in the world with and through the body remains undamaged, to a
minimal degree at least. In other words, individuals retain the ability to be present in
the world as a subject of perception and action. In a situation such as the one described
by Fanon, however, this fundamental ability of being “I” is replaced by the body image
(“me”) accorded by the victimizer. Thus, “I” am no longer living this body from within,
but rather “me” (the Negro) lives this body from the perspective of the victimizer,
inducing the latter’s racist ideology. In terms of KH structure, replacing “I” with “me”
converts “I can” into “I cannot”. Although the “I” still perceives the world, this world
no longer appears as a familiar environment filled with rich possibilities for action but
rather as a strange place, Ataria (in press c), seen through the eyes of the racist other.

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When Body Image Takes over the Body Schema: The Case of Frantz…

Discussion

Current research (Buxbaum et  al. 2000; Cole and Paillard 1995; De Preester and
Knockaert 2005; Gallagher and Cole 1995; Head and Holmes 1911) regarding the
BS and BI appears to consider the BS more basic than the BI. Intuitive support of
this idea is rooted in the evolutionary perspective: whereas the BS is rooted in the
sensorimotor system, BI corresponds to how we perceive the body and presupposes
more complex processes such as self-reflexivity (Gallagher 2005; Pitron and De
Vignemont 2017). In other words, BS represents our basic ability to be-in-the-world,
whereas BI can be defined in terms of the mirror test (sometimes called the mark
test, mirror self-recognition test [Gallup 1970] or the like). However, Fanon seems
to suggest that, in some cases at least, the BS is assimilated into the BI. Comparing
Fanon and IW, one may suggest that while IW lost his BS due to a biological virus,
Fanon’s BS was affected by the racist virus. Yet to some extent, Fanon’s situation is
even worse than that of IW: while IW could not recover his BS, Fanon’s BS was still
susceptible to change and, consequently, was reorganized and reshaped (some may
argue even replaced) by the BI. Let us examine the implications of this notion—
returning to what Sartre described as the third ontological dimension of the body.
In the context of current research, BI is a mixture of perceptions, beliefs, and emo-
tional attitudes toward one’s own body; it does not explicitly include how the other’s
gaze shapes this mixture. With this in mind, this paper suggests that the gaze of the
other has the potential to change a person’s BI directly. Namely, there is no need for the
BS to be involved in this process. Sartre already proposed such a notion, when he wrote,
"my fundamental connection with the Other-as-subject must be able to be referred back
to my permanent possibility of being seen by the Other" (1956: 256). Thus, Sartre con-
tinued, "I grasp the Other’s look at the very center of my act as the solidification and
alienation of my own possibilities. In fear or in anxious or prudent anticipation" (1956:
263, emphasis added). It seems the Merleau-Ponty was also aware of such possibility:
Usually man does not show his body, and, when he does, it is either nervously
or with an intention to fascinate. He has the impression that the alien gaze which
runs over his body is stealing it from him, or else, on the other hand, that the
display of his body will deliver the other person up to him, defenceless, and that
in this case the other will be reduced to servitude. Shame and immodesty, then,
take their place in a dialectic of the self and the other which is that of master
and slave: in so far as I have a body, I may be reduced to the status of an object
beneath the gaze of another person, and no longer count as a person for him, or
else I may become his master and, in my turn, look at him. But this mastery is
self-defeating, since, precisely when my value is recognized through the other’s
desire, he is no longer the person by whom I wished to be recognized, but a
being fascinated, deprived of his freedom, and who therefore no longer counts in
my eyes. Saying that I have a body is thus a way of saying that I can be seen as
an object and that I try to be seen as a subject, that another can be my master or
my slave, so that shame and shamelessness express the dialectic of the plurality
of consciousness, and have a metaphysical significance plurality of conscious-
nesses and that they in fact have a metaphysical signification. (2002: 193)

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 Y. Ataria, S. Tanaka

Schilder’s classic text on BI also supports this idea. Emphasizing the mutual rela-
tionship of gazes between the self and the other, he writes, “There is a continual
interchange between our own body-image and the image of others” (1950: 227,
emphasis added). Furthermore, he claims that one’s body image is intertwined with
that of the other. Thus essentially, Schilder believes that due to the relations betewen
the self and the other their BIs affect each other through their gazes;
There is no other way out than to formulate that our own body-image and the
body-images of others are primary data of experience, and that there is from
the beginning a very close connection between the body-image of ourselves
and the body-images of others. (1950:235, emphasis added)
Bearing this in mind, it is only natural that the other can change one’s BI directly
and vice versa.

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