Frantz Fanon's Classic Work on Race, Identity, and Decolonization: "Black Skin, White Masks"

Cyndy: Black people are more than the sum of their parts or their collective history. European vs American black experience has always been a search for things or power beyond our present condition. The symbol of white is right because of our experience pressures one to explore what you do not have. It is the sampling of new experiences that reshape the mindset for maintaining the present black condition or rejecting white acceptance. When people try to change their environment their is always push back.

United States on Sep 13, 2023

Tommy Tune: This is a must read for everyone! It gives much perspective about people's lived experiences and provides valuable commentary still relevant today.

United States on Jul 14, 2022

Mark Sarich: Imagine how useful academia could be if this kind of writing was accepted at the doctoral level these days! Here is a concise analysis of the problem with plausible solutions. Not what seriously more than 99% of all academic writing in sociology, literature, the art, comparative literature, and anthropology hold as a gold standard today; today you must obfuscate your pointless observations with academic jargon, citation and reference to others who have made no real observations, and fighting racism by supporting a new way of talking in order to maintain the existing inequitable systems.

United States on Feb 08, 2021

Alysia G: A little repetitive on the concepts, but it's a classic and a great read

Canada on Mar 11, 2019

Flora: Ich konzentriere momentan auf meinem Expose für die Bewerbung um eine Promotionsstelle, und das Buch gehört zu meinen wichtigsten Primärliteratur. Das Buch kommt schnell an, ich habe es am Freitag bestellt, und am Samstag mit Prime bekommen. Die Papiere sind gut gearbeitet, und die Schriften sind deutlich ausgedruckt. Aber ich finde es ein bisschen teuer.

Germany on Dec 30, 2017

Saabirah: Haven't read it all yet because I don't understand some of the terminology but from what I have read already I'm interested to see what the rest of the book is about

United Kingdom on Jun 19, 2017

Wrobino: This is surprisingly not about being black or white. It is about finding our "self" through free interaction with others. It is about the tragic loss that occurs when that interaction is constrained by violence. This is not about repairing the past, feeling angry or feeling sorry: it is about the business of getting on with being a person. It's about getting on with inventing yourself
through others. This book is an inspiration, an invitation, a demand to be brave enough to take action and be someone. I had to hang on in this book, keep reading, enjoy the words of this paragraph or believe we are going somewhere good in a coming paragraph. The integrity of the book came together at the end where you'd expect it.

Canada on Nov 17, 2014

Ephraim Morrison: This is a brilliant attempt of the era to scientifically analyze the black psyche in a white world. This book has far reaching effects on how colonialism was viewed to impact the black man in society and undoubtedly must have sparked a few revolutionary undertakings. This is not my first encounter with this book, I have had the opportunity to use it as sociological reference in 1981/82 and felt compelled that I would read it in its entirety some day. Now I can say I did and was more than satisfied. Fanon is a great writer of his times and beyond. I am tempted to say that this book should be read by all Black men and women however it is not an easy read because to me it is not a Novel (not a story book). As a student of History, Sociology, Psychology and Psychiatry I found it very delightful and relatively easy to follow. This Book is very powerful writings for the time when it was written, no wonder Fanon was dissuaded from using it as his Thesis for his Ph.D.. May his soul rest in peace but may his ideas live on. O my body always make me a man who questions?

United States on May 11, 2014

Anonymous: Es ist interessant, wie Fanon seine Sicht auf die Welt darlegt und den Einfluss der Hauptfarbe auf Denken, Selbstbewusstsein und (Selbst- und Fremd-)Wahrnehmung beschreibt. Man muss sich dabei natürlich stets des Entstehungskontextes bewusst sein und darf nicht aus den Augen verlieren, dass das Werk schon viele Jahrzehnte alt ist.

Die Übersetzung (Originalsprache ist Französisch) finde ich allerdings nicht ideal. Es ist klar, dass das Buch schon ein paar Jahre auf dem Buckel hat und ich sehe deswegen keine Notwendigkeit, dass in dem Buch das Wort "Negro" (dt. Neger), wie es Fanon verwendet hat (franz. nègre, passend zur Bewegung der négritude), hier als "black man" übersetzt findet. Damals hat er das eben so gesagt und ich finde es wirkt künstlich, das zu ändern.
Auch wird häufig statt der 1. Person Singular die 1. Person Plural verwendet ("Wir" statt "Ich"), was mich ebenfalls abgelenkt und durcheinandergebracht hat (manchmal steht in einem Satz die eine und im nächsten die andere Form).

Da ich eher wortgetreue Übersetzungen vorziehe und den Text möglichst nahe am Original kennenlernen wollte, gibt es Punktabzug. Allgemein ist das Werk lesenswert, da...

Germany on Feb 01, 2014

Ioana: "I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos... I am black, not because of a curse, but because my skin has been able to capture all the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a drop of sun under the earth." (p. 27)~ Thus Fanon reaches into the experience and meaning of the black man's alienation.

This alienation strikes in an essential sense--it stems from the denial of the black man's very flesh: "The black man is attacked for his corporeality. It is his tangible personality that is lynched. It is his actual being that is dangerous..." (142). The white man, who has been obsessed with eradicating the body out of collective consciousness for millennia, now associates this abjected domain of the body with the black man, and constructs it as the essential evil Other. The white man does this because he is insecure--he does this out of hatred, a hatred that he works to cultivate, that consumes his time and energy. The white man is dehumanized. Projecting his fears onto the black man, the white man shirks his responsibility to acknowledge his guilt (83) in instrumentalizing the black man (206).

Even...

United States on Feb 23, 2009