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Fanon Fuss
Fanon Fuss
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DIANAFUSS
Imperial Subjects
I would like to thankJudith Butler, Eduardo Cadava, Eric Santner,and especially Carole-Anne
Tylerfor their commentson an earlier draft of this essay.
1. Later in this chapterI discuss morefully Fanon 'sproblematicuse of the masculineas both
thepoint of departureand thefinal referentfor a new theoryof the subject. Suffice it to say here
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that Fanon's powerful anticolonial polemics remain completely caught up in the masculinist
presuppositionsof the discourse they seek to displace.
2. In Lacanian terms,these two conceptscan be distinguishedin at least three ways: first, the
other (small o) denotes a specular relation to an Imaginaryrival, while the Other (capital O)
designates a linguistic relation to a Symbolic interlocutor;second, the other depends upon a
narcissistic relation, while the Other marks the locus of intersubjectivity;and third, the other is
produced as an effect of primary identificationin which the subject recognizes itself in its own
image, while the Other is constructedas an effect of secondary identificationin which the subject
shifts its point of address to another speaking subject. For a much fuller discussion of the
psychoanalyticdefinitionofalterity, see Boons-Grafe. For a deconstructionof thepsychoanalytic
distinctionbetweenprimaryand secondary identification,and its normativeapplications,see my
"Freud'sFallen Women."
White
22
6. I should clarify here that Fanon's profound discomfort with Sartre's endorsementof
negritudein Orph6enoir is provokednot by Sartre's use of the dialecticper se but by the specific
place that negritude is made to occupy within it. Sartre's dialectic of thesis (white racism),
antithesis(negritude),and synthesis (humanism)assigns "black"to the role of negation in what
is essentially,for Fanon, a dialectics of racial assimilationism.See Sartre,Orpheenoir. Theworks
ofAime Cesaire,LeopoldSenghor,andLeon Damas,featured in the negritudeanthologyprefaced
by Orph6enoir,provideFanon withan alternativephilosophical andpoliticalposition from which
to critiqueSartre's controversialintroduction.
7. This theoryof subversivemimicryfinds its most extended treatmentin the work of Luce
Irigaray. See Irigaray's This Sex Which Is Not One. Carole-AnneTyler'sFemaleImpersonators
offers a careful and thorough critique of the problems with Irigaray's mimicry/masquerade
distinctionas it falters on the twingrounds of intentionand reception.
8. Bhabha,whoseworkcenterson investigatingtheplace offantasyanddesire in theexercise
of colonial power, is one of the first cultural theorists to think through the ambivalences of
identificationin termsof its inscriptionin colonial history.Bhabha's mostinfluentialessays all take
Fanon as theirtheoreticalpointof departure.In additionto "OfMimicryandMan,"see also "The
OtherQuestion," "SlyCivility," "SignsTakenfor Wonders,""RememberingFanon, "Interro-
gating Identity," and "'Race,' Timeand the Revision of Modernity."
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The wearing of the veil throughoutthe period of the French occupation of Algeria
provides Fanonwith one of his most importantexamples of the role of mimesis in the
psychopathologyof colonial relations. In the opening essay of A Dying Colonialism,
entitled "Algeria Unveiled," Fanon examines the mutable and contradictorycultural
meaningsattributedto Arabwomen's dress,whathe suggestivelydenotesas "thehistoric
dynamismof the veil" [Dying 63]. For the Europeanoccupiers,the veil functionsas an
exotic signifier, invested with all the propertiesof a sexual fetish. Faced with a veiled
Algerianwoman, Fanonwrites, the Europeanis consumedwith a desire to see, a desire
that,in colonialism's highly sexualizedeconomy of looking, also operatesas an urge for
violent possession:
The colonialist desire to unveil the Algerian woman is given special urgency by the
capabilityof the veil to block the look of the Otherwhile permittingthe woman herself
to assume the privilege of the ImperialSubject-to see withoutbeing seen [44]. Fanon
reads the French colonial political programof "unveiling"as an attemptto strip all
Algerians of their national, cultural, and religious identity by reducing the Algerian
woman to a sexual representationmore readilyassimilatedto white Europeanideals of
womanhood. In direct opposition to the signification of the veil for the French
colonialists, the veil comes to function for the colonized as a visible sign of Algerian
nationalist identity and a symbol of resistance to imperial penetrationand colonial
domination. Each attempt to Europeanize the Algerian woman is countered by a
reinvestmentof the veil with national import. Even more importantlyfor Fanon, the
wearingof theveil operatesas one of themostvisible anddramaticindicesto thehistorical
emergence of women's political agency: "the Algerian women who had long since
droppedtheveil once againdonnedthehaik,thusaffirmingthatit was nottruethatwoman
liberatedherself at the invitationof Franceand of Generalde Gaulle"[62].
Yet as MervatHatemremindsus, revolutionarycalls for the reassumptionof the veil
may have quite othermotivationsduringtimes of severe economic hardshipbroughton
by the colonial wars: the veil, and the exclusion of women fromthe public spherethatit
signifies, upholdsa traditionalsexualdivisionof laborandpreservesfor men increasingly
scarcejobs in the workplace [31].10 Within a single discourse the veil can thus signify
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13. Fanon does not get awayfrom theproblem of intentionalityhere; indeed,Fanon's point
is thatpoliticsnecessarilyresidesin intentionality.Fanon 'sstrategyis to reconstructthepossibility
of agency that colonialism vitiates, and he does this by locating "politics" in the space where
imitationexceeds identification.
14. Theclearest statementofFanon 's view thatidentificationitself is a pathological condition
producedby the colonial relationcomesin Black Skin, WhiteMasks,whereFanon suggests, again
using Sartreanterms, that "as long as the black man is among his own, he will have no occasion
... to experiencehis being throughothers" [109]. For Fanon it is not the case that unconscious
racial identificationscreatethecolonial driveforassimilation,butratherthatcolonialdominations
produce thephenomenonof racial identification. No identificationwithoutcolonization.
Decolonizing Sexuality
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21. After all, "therevolutionaryis thefirst to have the right to say: 'Oedipus?' Never heard
of it" [Deleuze and Guattari96].
22. In additionto Gendzier'sbiography,several other critical studieson Fanon appeared in
the early 1970s. See Bouvier; Caute;Lucas; Woddis;Zahar; and Geismar.
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23. Most of whatFreud has to say on race can be found in his anthropologicalwork,where
Gustave Le Bon's use of the phrase "racial unconscious" as a synonym for "archaic" or
"primitive"is revisedand expandedbyFreud to includehis theoryof repression. For Freud's most
extendedtreatmentof thesubjectof race, see TotemandTaboo(1913), 13:1-162. For theinfluence
of Darwin on Freud's theoryof race, see Edwin R. Wallace's Freudand Anthropology. Freud's
GroupPsychology andthe Analysis of the Ego (1921) provides us with a psychoanalytictheoryof
racismthatmaynot be withoutinterestin the contextof thepresentchapter: "Closelyrelatedraces
keep one another at arm's length; the South German cannot endure the North German, the
Englishmancasts everykindof aspersionupontheScot, theSpaniarddespises thePortuguese. We
are no longerastonishedthatgreaterdifferencesshouldlead to an almostinsuperablerepugnance,
such as the Gallicpeoplefeelfor the German,theAryanfor the Semite,and the whiteracesfor the
coloured"[18: 101]. See also Gilman.
24. Burton writes: "Thereexists whatI shall call a 'SotadicZone,' boundedwestwardsby
the northernshores of theMediterranean(N. Lat. 43?)and by the Southern(N. Lat. 30?). Thusthe
depth would be 780 to 800 miles including meridionalFrance, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and
Greece, with the coast-regions of Africafrom Marocco to Egypt" [206]. See Burton's Terminal
Essay for thefull coordinatesof the Sotadic Zone, too lengthyto be cited here.
Identificationin Translation
25. There is considerabledisagreementover the extent of Fanon's language skills and its
consequencesfor his professional work,a disputethat in the level of its intensityunderscoreshow
very high are the stakes involved. Fanon's most sympatheticbiographer,Peter Geismar,claims
that by the end of 1956, several years after arrivingin Algeria, Fanon could "understandmost of
36
what his patients were telling him" [86]. Irene Gendzierprovides a sharply differing account,
describing Fanon's efforts to learn Arabic as "stillborn"and personally anguishing [77]. For
AlbertMemmi,Fanon's refusal to learn the language of thepatients he was treating constituted
nothing less than a "psychiatricscandal" [5].
26. WalterBenjamin's "TheTaskof the Translator" takesas its thesis the useful notion that
any language is a place of exile, that "all translationis only a somewhatprovisionalway of coming
to termswith theforeignness of languages " [75]. Benjamin'sinterestin translation,however,lies
in the "suprahistoricalkinshipof languages" or "the relatedness of two languages, apart from
historical considerations" [74]. The theoretical move to banish history from the realm of
translation operates to conceal, and ultimately to preserve, a colonizing impulse at work in
translation;Benjamin's "greatmotif of integratingmany tongues into one true language" [77]
representsan imperialistdream,afantasy of linguisticincorporationand culturalassimilation. If
it is impossibleto read translationoutside the historyof colonial imperialism,then it may also be
the case that colonial imperialismoperates as a particular kindof translation. In the roundtable
discussion on translationincluded in Derrida's The Ear of the Other,Eugene Vanceposes the
questionin its simplestrhetoricalform: "Isn't the colonizationof theNew Worldbasically a form
of translation?" [137]. For more on the imperialhistory of translation,see Krupat193-200.
27. Complicatingmattersfurther is the question of Fanon as object of identification. In
"CriticalFanonism,"HenryLouis Gates,Jr., demonstrateshow Fanon is inevitablya repository
for his critic'sprojectiveidentifications: "IfSaid made of Fanon an advocateofpost-postmodern
counternarrativesof liberation;if [Abdul]JanMohamedmade of Fanon a Manicheantheoristof
colonialism as absolute negation; and if Bhabha cloned, from Fanon's theoria, another Third
Worldpost-structuralist,[Benita] Parry's Fanon ... turnsout to confirmher own ratheroptimistic
vision of literatureand social action" [465]. To this list I wouldhave to add myown identification
withFanon thepsychoanalytictheorist,practicing clinician, and universityteacher.
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