I cast an objective gaze over myself, and I discovered my blackness, my ethnic characteristics—and they burst my eardrums with cannibalism, backwardness [l’arriération mentale], fetishism, racial defects, slaves and above all, and above all:  “Y a bon Banania.”  On that day I was disoriented, incapable of existing outside with the Other, the White man, who mercilessly imprisoned me.  I carried myself far away from my Dasein [de mon être-là]—very far away—and constituted myself as an object.  What was this for me, if not a separation [décollement], an uprooting [arrachement], a hemorrhage which congealed with black blood over my entire body.  Nevertheless, I did not want this reconsideration, this thematization of myself. I wanted quite simply to be a human among other humans.[3]

As Fanon takes up the white view of himself, he experiences its all-encompassing reach.  That is, his becoming a white-defined black other involved more than his present encounter with the child on the train; in essence, he entered into the white erasing and re-scripting of black history.  Not only is his present fixed by the white other, but his past is fixed as well.  The child’s unison refrain gives rise to polyphonic lines of “cannibalism, backwardness, fetishism” and the like.

Even if it is the case that the child, because of his lack of cognitive development, is an unwilling or non-culpable participant in furthering racism and racial discourse; nonetheless, the effect—un-reflective racism in children—is a reality that confronts the black other on a daily basis and forces him to experience his phenotypic differences as conceived by the white imagination.  As Fanon explains, “I am overdetermined from the outside.  […] The white gaze, the only valid one, is already dissecting me.  I am fixed.  Once their microtomes are sharpened, the Whites objectively cut sections of my reality.”[4] Fanon’s body, particularly his ever-present, always uncovered black skin, brimming with manifold white-determined meanings, takes on a life of its own.  This second-self is created through discourse—a socially constructed subjectivity—a kind of reverse shadow whose form creates a path upon which Fanon must walk. As the encounter with the child continues and the refrain sounds once again, “Look, a Negro!  Maman, a Negro!”, the boy’s mother, somewhat nervously, cries, “Ssh! You’ll make him angry.  Don’t pay attention to him, monsieur, he doesn’t realize you’re just as civilized as we are.”[5] As Kant, Hegel and other Western philosophers have asserted, the Western tradition, for which white European culture becomes the surrogate, is the standard for determining whether a nation has a culture or could possibly become cultured and civilized, and thus enter into world history.

Kant, paving the way for Hegel, claims that true history begins with the Greeks and that non-Greek peoples are validated only through contact with the Greeks.  On Kant’s estimation, the (non)histories of non-Greeks are simply “terra incognita,” an amorphous X, lacking (Western) form and thus unable to appear as intelligible.  He then turns to the Jews to illustrate how a nation may enter a state of historical and cultural recognition.

This happened with the Jewish nation (volk) at the time of the Ptolemies through the Greek translation of the Bible, without which one would ascribe little credibility to their isolated records.  From that point forward (if this beginning has been properly ascertained) one can pursue its narratives.  And thus with all the other nations (Völkern).[6]

In his lectures on the philosophy of history, Hegel takes up this same line of thinking; however, in order to justify his position, he provides an elaborate narrative in which Geist’s presence or absence indicates whether a nation has historical, cultural or socio-political significance.[7] One might go as far as to claim that the mother’s remark to Fanon has its own genealogical history which is consonant with the Western philosophical tradition; her awareness of this history matters little.  Approached in this manner, echoes of Hegel’s depiction of Africans as cannibalistic can still be heard in the child’s cry, “Maman, the Negro’s going to eat me”.[8]

All of these discourses—whether philosophical, pseudoscientific, or everyday chatter on a public train—comprise the many pieces of Fanon’s “black” self, woven together by the white other.

Notes

[2] See also Bart van Leewan, ‘To What Extent is Racism a Magical Transformation?’ Journal of Social Philosophy 38 (2007), 296 ff.  Van Leewan discusses the ‘gaze’ from the perspective of the racist in order to give an account of the motivational structure of racism.  In addition, van Leeuwen’s essay offers several practical anti-racism strategies (see especially, 303–5).

[3] My translation.  Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs, 90-1.

[4] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 95.

[5] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 93.

[6] Immanuel Kant.  ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim (1784)’, trans. Allen W. Wood, 107–120, at 118. Anthropology, History and Education. Ed. and trans. Günter Zöller and Robert Louden.  (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2008), 118.

[7] Robert Bernasconi has devoted several manuscripts to the study of Hegel and his Eurocentrism.  See, for example, Bernasconi, ‘With What Must the Philosophy of World History Begin?  On the Racial Bias of Hegel’s Eurocentrism’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts 22 (2000):  171–201.  See also, Bernasconi, ‘Hegel at the Court of the Ashanti’.  In Hegel After Derrida, ed. by Stuart Barnett, 41–63.  London:  Routledge, 1998.

[8] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 93.

Behold the practical operation of this internal slave trade—the American slave trade sustained by American politics and American religion!  Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market.  You know what is a swine-drover?  I will show you a man-drover.  They inhabit all our southern states.  They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation with droves of human stock.  You will see one of these human-flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans.  These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers.  They are food for the cotton-field and the deadly sugar-mill.  Mark the sad procession as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them.  Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives.  There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray.  Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms.  See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes, weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn.  The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength.  Suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream that seems to have torn its way to the center of your soul.  The crack you heard was the sound of the slave whip; the scream you heard was from the woman you saw with the babe.  Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains; that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on.  Follow this drove to New Orleans.  Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers.  See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude.[1]

This is simply one among many scenes depicting the hardships African American slaves endured on a daily basis as a result of the institution of chattel slavery.  Enslaved by the love of money, the master’s vision becomes distorted.  Not only does he see human beings as things, but the sounds of suffering fall silent to his ears.  Deafened to the wailing of mothers’ torn from their children, he transposes the dissonance of clanking chains into gold-en keys, which like the dual cut of a double-edged sword open the door to his future and secure the bonds of his brother.

To add to their humiliation and degraded status as mere property of the white man, slaves were subjected to public auctions where they were ordered to stand, often naked or nearly so, and allow the potential buyers to examine their bodies to ensure their suitability for long-term servitude.  If a slave’s body showed signs of illness, disease, or possible weaknesses, they were passed over as bad investments, unprofitable for the master’s business.  Scar tissue on a slave’s back—the number of scars, whether the scar was old or relatively fresh—became the subject of a mythology employed to determine a slave’s character.   Too many scars indicated a rebellious spirit, whereas having few scars meant that the slave possessed a docile, obedient spirit.  “As they worked their way from inflicted scars to essential character, buyers fixed slaves in a typology of character according to the frequency, intensity, and chronology of the whipping apparent on their backs.”[2] While the slaves stood humiliated, exposed and wondering what kind of master might purchase them on that particular day, the slave buyers paraded themselves before the crowds as augurs who “could read slaves’ backs as encodings of their histories.”[3]

Notes

[2] Johnson, Soul by Soul, 145.

[3] Ibid., 145.

In this post, I want to focus on the term “social constructionism” in order to then discuss how various thinkers have come to understand subjectivities, identities and concepts as socially constructed and whether or not or to what degree human agency is compatible with some variant of social constructionism.  More specifically, I am interested in understanding how identities or subjectivities and concepts such as “race,” “slave,” and “black” arise, how they are sustained and eventually become ossified historically, and what role various socio-political institutions, discourses and cultural practices play in their formation and maintenance.

As a provisionary starting point, it is helpful to think of social constructionism as analogous to the production of artifacts.[2] Broadly put, an artifact is an object designed and created by a human agent for a specific purpose or set of purposes.   Such objects include handcrafted bookshelves, Rublev’s icon of the Trinity, Cézanne’s painting, Le Cabanon de Jourdan, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in E Minor.  Here we have reasonably unobjectionable instances of objects designed and produced by identifiable agents.  However, when we consider Western tonal music, the modern state or human language, we encounter artifacts whose specific intentional and originary agents are difficult if not impossible to identify.  Nonetheless, in the second group of examples human agency is no doubt involved and the emergence and maintenance of each involves reference to historical and socio-political practices, customs, and traditions.  Similarly, as Sally Haslanger explains, certain categories of individuals “count as social constructions because the conditions for being a member of the kind or category include social (properties and) relations.”[3] For example, to be considered (legally and officially) adopted obtains only in a society that recognizes the status of legal adoption and has the social and political structures in place to facilitate such practices.  Just as agents produce artifacts for various purposes, so, too, identities, subjectivities and concepts are constructed intentionally as well as unintentionally through discourses, institutions, traditions and socio-political practices.[4]

With the above sketch in place, let us turn to a few examples from Frantz Fanon in order to illustrate more concretely how human subjectivities—like artifacts—are constructed.   As Fanon explains, in a mostly black community in the Antilles, he neither identified nor saw himself as a “black” subject; however, once he entered a predominantly white socio-political context where the category “black” is assigned in advance multiple negative meanings, a confrontation with racially scripted phenotypic differences was unavoidable. [5] Fanon likewise narrates how a particularly painful racial encounter on a train was a breaking point for him.  That is, although he resisted repeatedly the ascriptions imposed upon him by the dominant discourse, he eventually gave in and began to internalize the white-defined view of the black other—intellectually inferior, culturally incompetent, an object to be fixed.  With this example, we see how discourse can function—one may even argue—causally to construct a particular subjectivity or identity.  Here we have a subjectivity, “black,” which was constructed in a specific socio-historical context through discourse, institutional practices, legal structures and so forth.  There is nothing intrinsic to the subject that corresponds to the fictive identity created by the dominant discourse; yet, because the society itself is, in this case, structured racially, those who have been labeled “black” can and often do come to see themselves as possessing at least some of the characteristics that have been ascribed to them.   As Haslanger observes,

Our classificatory schemes, at least in social contexts, may do more than just map preexisting groups of individuals; rather our attributions have the power to both establish and reinforce groupings which may eventually come to “fit” the classifications.  In such cases, classificatory schemes function more like a script than a map.[6]

None of the above should be taken to mean that an individual is completely socially determined or unable to resist or re-construct his or her subjectivity.  In future posts, I plan to discuss specific examples of such resistance possibilities via textual analyses of Foucault, Fanon and Frederick Douglass.

Notes

[2] This section on social constructionism is indebted to Sally Haslanger’s work.  See especially, Sally Haslanger, “Ontology and Social Construction,” Philosophical Topics 23 (1995):  95–125.

[3] Ibid., 98.

[4] Regarding unintended socially constructed identities, in Discipline and Punish, Foucault traces the history “delinquency,” showing how it emerges as an unintended subjectivity produced by the modern prison system.  This new subjectivity arises in spite of the fact that the stated intention of the institution is to rehabilitate offenders.

[5] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 90.

[6] Haslanger, “Ontology and Social Construction,” 100.  Haslanger labels this type of construction, “discursive.”  Here “[s]omething is discursively constructed just in case it is the way it is, to some substantial extent, because of what is attributed (and/or self-attributed) to it” (Ibid., 100).

For no longer does the black man have to be just black, but he has to be black over against the white man. Some would want to remind us that this situation works both ways.  We answer back that it’s false.  The black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man.  From one day to the next, Negroes have two systems of reference from which they must take their bearings.  Their metaphysical, or less pretentiously, their customs and the authorities to which they referred, were abolished because they were in contradiction with a civilization that has ignored them and imposed itself on them.[1]

As my own description of Fanon’s passage indicates, the terms “social construction,” “constructionism,” and similar phrases are commonplace in much of the current philosophical literature on race, gender and sexuality.  For example, most contemporary philosophers of race argue that race is not a natural, biological kind—a widely-held belief that came to full fruition in the nineteenth century. [2] In contemporary race theory literature, this former view of race goes by a variety of names:  racialism (K. Anthony Appiah), biobehavioral essentialism (Ron Mallon), racial essentialism and so forth.   Given the widespread rejection of this position among race theorists, it is important to have a clear idea of precisely what the position entails.  Ron Mallon presents a concise explanation of the three aspects of racialism or what he calls biobehavioral essentialism.

Races were believed to share biobehavioral essences:  underlying natural (and perhaps genetic) properties that (1) are heritable, biological features, (2) are shared by all and only the members of a race, and (3) explain behavioral, characterological, and cultural predispositions of individual persons and racial groups.[3]

Although there are significant points of disagreement among scholars engaged in race related studies, there is, as Mallon highlights, a general consensus among philosophers of race, sociologists and biologists that “races do not share such biobehavioral essences.”[4] Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence against racialism is the conclusion reached in recent scientific studies of intra- and intergroup genetic variation.  As the study of genetics gained prestige in scientific circles, those adhering to racial essentialism turned to this new field, believing that the differences among races must be the result of an underlying genetic discrepancy.  However, “studies of human genetic diversity suggest that genetic variation within racially identified populations is as great as or greater than diversity between populations.”[5] In light of these findings, the possibility of confirming a distinct racial essence “shared by all and only members of a race” is highly improbable.[6]

Even with a general consensus concerning the untenability of racialism among philosophers of race, debates abound as to whether racial discourse should be retained given the negative purposes for which it has been utilized. In light of the abundant evidence against a biobehavioral essentialized notion of race, many race theorists argue for what Mallon has labeled, “racial skepticism, the view that races do not exist at all.”[7] Others, however, believe that although an essentialized, hierarchical view of race must be rejected, racial language, nonetheless, should be salvaged, albeit purged of its negative history.  This second group defends what Mallon calls racial constructionism.  On this view, race is a social construction and thus exists as a social, rather than a natural kind.[8] Racial constructionists hold that the notion of race as a social kind plays a crucial role in establishing, maintaining and developing a group’s identity; consequently, it as well as racial discourse must be preserved.  Mallon lists a third group, racial population naturalism, which claims that “races may exist as biologically salient populations, albeit ones that do not have the biologically determined social significance once imputed to them.”[9]

Notes

[2] For a helpful historical and philosophical discussion of the significant figures and events that paved the way for nineteenth century (pseudoscientific) racial essentialism, see Robert Bernasconi, “Who Invented the Concept of Race?  Kant’s Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race,” in Race, ed. Robert Bernasconi (Oxford:  Blackwell, 2001), 11–36. Bernasconi argues that although Kant was not the first to use the term “race,” he was the first to give the term definitional precision  As Bernasconi explains, for Kant, what distinguishes race from variety is the fact that “races are marked by hereditary characteristics that are unavoidable in the offspring” (Ibid., 17).  Regarding the problems of a biological concept of race, see Daniel Blackburn, “Why Race is not a Biological Concept,” in Race and Racism in Theory and Practice, ed. Berel Lang, 3–26. Oxford:  Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.  See also, Ron Mallon, “‘Race’:  Normative, Not Metaphysical or Semantic,” Ethics 116 (2006):  525-551, especially 528–29.

[3] Mallon, “‘Race’:  Normative, Not Metaphysical or Semantic,” 528-529.

[4] Ibid., 529.

[5] Ibid., 529.

[6] Ibid., 529.

[7] Ibid., 525, italics retained.  See, for example, K. Anthony Appiah, “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race,” in Overcoming Racism and Sexism, eds. Linda A. Bell and David Blumenfeld, 59–78.  Oxford:  Rowman & Littlefield, 1995; Naomi Zack, Philosophy of Science and Race (New York:  Routledge, 2002).

[8] Mallon, “‘Race’:  Normative, Not Metaphysical or Semantic,” 525-526, fn. 4.  See, for example, Charles Mills, Blackness Visible:  Essays on Philosophy and Race (Ithaca, NY:  Cornell University Press, 1998); Lucius Outlaw, On Race and Philosophy (New York:  Routledge, 1996); Michael Root, “How We Divide the World,” Philosophy of Science 67 (2000):  S628–S639; Ronald Sundstrom, “Racial Nominalism,” Journal of Social Philosophy 33 (2002):  193–210.

[9] Mallon, “‘Race’:  Normative, Not Metaphysical or Semantic,” 526.  See, for example, Robin Andreasen, “Race:  Biological Reality or Social Construct?”  Philosophy of Science 67 (2000):  S653–S666; Philip Kitcher, “Race, Ethnicity, Biology, Culture,” in Racism, ed. Leonard Harris (New York:  Humanity Books, 1999):  87–120.

His [Covey’s] work went on in his absence almost as well as in his presence; and he had the faculty of making us feel that he was ever present with us.  This he did by surprising us.  He seldom approached the spot where we were at work openly, if he could do it secretly.  He always aimed at taking us by surprise.  Such was his cunning, that we used to call him, among ourselves, “the snake.”  When we were at work in the cornfield, he would sometimes crawl on his hands and knees to avoid detection, and all at once he would rise nearly in our midst, and scream out, “Ha, ha!  Come, come! Dash on, dash on!”  This being his mode of attack, it was never safe to stop a single minute.  His comings were like a thief in the night.  He appeared to us as being ever at hand.  He was under every tree, behind every stump, in every bush, and at every window, on the plantation. […] Mr. Covey’s forte consisted in his power to deceive.  His life was devoted to planning and perpetuating the grossest deceptions.[1]

Covey’s maneuverings, though lacking the sophistication of twentieth century surveillance technologies, nonetheless produced the same effect on the slaves.  That is, Covey was able to make his gaze always present even when he was in fact absent.  Covey, like the Panopticon, is seemingly omnipresent even when unseen.  Though limited by his physical existence, his regular surprise attacks coupled with the penalties that were exercised upon those caught idle or not working efficiently, allowed Covey to transcend his spatial limitations.  Having created an atmosphere of fear in which the slaves lived and moved and had their being, Covey’s actual physical presence was no longer needed.  That is, the sign of a broken slave was the internal inscription of the master’s gaze, or in more Foucaudian terms, the interiorization of the panoptic gaze and the subsequent creation of a new subjectivity, the slave.

Notes

Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition.  I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean.  The sight of these always affected me powerfully…with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul’s complaint… ‘You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip!  You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron!  O that I were free!  O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing!  Alas! Betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll.  Go on, go on.  O that I could also go!  Could I but swim!  If I could fly!  O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute!  The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance.  I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery.  O God, save me!  God, deliver me!  Let me be free!  Is there any God?  Why am I a slave?[1]

Notes

When Douglass’s former owner, Thomas Auld, could no longer deal with Douglass, he sent him to Covey.  Douglass describes his time with Covey as follows:  “the first six months, of that year … scarce a week passed without his whipping me.  I was seldom free from a sore back” (p. 56).[1] He then recounts how Covey worked him day and night and in all weather conditions and how at last Covey’s “discipline” broke him.

I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me.  Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me.  I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute! (p. 58).

Although Douglass had attained a level of freedom through literacy—an accomplishment that was itself an “argument” against the white hegemonic discourse which claimed that blacks were subhuman, incapable of “higher” rational reflection, and thus in need of (white) masters—and thus had within himself moved from an animal-like existence to a more human existence, he as an embodied being was still in bonds and subject to the (irrational) whims of  white society.  In fact, Douglass indicates in the passage above, that Covey’s “disciplinary regime” (i.e. torture and inhumane work routines) transformed him back into a beast-like existence.

After one particularly brutal and near-death beating at the hands of Covey, Douglass decides to flee.  He returns to his former owner, Mr. Auld, who rather mercilessly commands him to go back to Covey.  As Douglass’s “dark night of slavery” continues, he contemplates suicide, living in the woods until he eventually dies for lack of food etc., or returning to Covey.  At last he decides to go back to Covey’s plantation, knowing that a bloody beating awaits him.  As Douglass is climbing over a fence to enter Covey’s field, Covey runs out to meet him with whip in hand.  Douglass manages to escape again and hides in the woods where he meets another slave named Sandy.  He and Sandy discuss his situation, and Sandy convinces him that he must return to Covey’s house.  However, before Douglass departs, Sandy gives Douglass a root with supposed magical, protective powers.  Sandy claims that if Douglass carries this root on his ride side, Covey will not come near him.  Douglass is highly skeptical but takes the root to please Sandy.  Douglass heads out a second time, this time returning on Easter Sunday.  Once Douglass enters his master’s property, he passed Covey, who, as a good Southern “Christian” is on his way to church.  To Douglass’s surprise, Covey interacts positively with him, which makes Douglass think that there might be something to Sandy’s root.  However, Monday is a different story; with Monday, we’re back to business as usual.  While laboring that morning in a stable, Douglass catches sight of Covey approaching with a long rope in hand.  Covey tackles Douglass and attempts to bind him with the rope.  Rather than remain a docile slave, Douglass decides to resist and fights back.  “At this moment—from whence came the spirit I don’t know—I resolved to fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose” (p. 64).  Douglass’s response took Covey by surprise, and Douglass could see for the first time fear in Covey’s eyes.  The two struggled for over two hours until Covey finally gave up.

If we bring Douglass’s narrative (as a hermeneutical “tool”) into conversation with Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, some rather interesting insights surface.  After Douglass’s act of physical resistance or more strongly put, his act of violence, Covey never again physically abuses Douglass.  Here contra Hegel’s account of the docile slave who cared more for his life than his freedom, the slave is willing to risk his life for freedom.  Douglass himself interpreted the fight with Covey as a decisive moment in his struggle for freedom.

The battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave.  It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood.  It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free.  The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for whatever else might follow, even death itself.  He only can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery.  I felt as I never felt before.  It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom.  My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.  I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me (p. 65).

Here it seems that something beyond intellectual freedom (i.e. literacy and what I’ve called “inner freedom”) was required for Douglass’s “resurrection.”  As an embodied, political being, Douglass’s experience of freedom was necessarily limited so long as Covey and the socio-political slavery apparatus had dominion over his body.  According to Douglass’s account, some kind of physical resistance or force was needed not only for his own sense of freedom but also so that Covey might recognize him as an Other with volitional and rational faculties capable of producing deliberate and purposeful acts of resistance.    (Though my knowledge of Marx is quite limited, I suppose that a Marxist would be delighted with this reading).  My final point is to highlight the fact that in Douglass’s narrative, the slave does not gain freedom or bring about a reversal in the master/slave relationship through his labor (The Marxist would not, however, find this point delightful). To the contrary, Douglass says that the excruciating labor he endured under Covey’s supervision crushed his spirit—“ I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!” (p. 58).   Although acquiring skills through labor does not bring about a reversal in the master/slave relationship, the master’s identity is (as Hegel claims) dialectically related to the slave’s.  How so?  Covey chooses not turn Douglass in for a public “whipping.”  Douglass’s explanation for Covey’s seemingly inexplicable decision is that Covey’s reputation as a slave-breaker was on the line.  He failed to break Douglass, and to turn Douglass in would be to admit that failure and lose his reputation. In short, Douglass worked within the power mechanisms of an oppressive slave society, and his resistance proved successful on multiple counts.  Power relations, as Foucault emphasizes, are not merely oppressive.  Rather, when power relations obtain, genuine resistance is possible.

Notes

When the transition to the racial-epidermal schema takes place, the all-pervasiveness of the white gaze—here understood broadly as the white mythological narrative as manifest in the cultural consciousness and systematically expressed in the cultural institutions and practices of a given society—functions like a Panopticon, keeping the black person under constant inspection.  Though speaking of the incarcerated, Foucault’s description applies quite well to the black person’s situation vis-à-vis the white, European other, “he is the object of information, never a subject in communication.”[2] As soon as the racial-epidermal schema has come to fruition and the black essence fixed, the requisite racial machinery has likewise been established to ensure “proper” social boundaries and to keep the white mythology unchallenged.  In a way similar to the Panopticon’s ability to “disindividualiz[e] power” and distribute it through various socio-cultural and legal structures, institutions and people, Fanon’s schemata point to the systemic racial structures of colonized Europe.[3] These racialized disciplinary practices, though not identical to the disciplinary practices Foucault describes, nonetheless share close family resemblances with “a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference.” [4] The racial-epidermal schema, broadly construed to include these systemic, disindividualized power structures, enables even the most vulnerable and innocent members of society—the child on the train—to be an instrument of and even operate the racial machinery.[5]

When the white mythology has its way, it gives birth to black subjugation, which has both an external and an internal dimension.  The external aspect is socio-political in nature and is often manifest in discriminatory legislation and unequal educational and employment opportunities.  The internal aspect comes when the black person can no longer bear the weight of the white alienating gaze and internalizes the narrative.  To return to Foucault’s metaphor, when the black person breaks down and accepts the white mythos, there is a sense in which the panoptic surveillance is no longer needed.[6] In Fanon’s description of his self-fragmenting descent, he draws attention to the sense of powerlessness that he felt in a colonialized context wherein mis-recognition by the white other was the norm.  “Disoriented, incapable of confronting the Other, the white man, who had no scruples about imprisoning me, I transported myself on that particular day far, very far, from myself, and gave myself up as an object.”[7]

Fanon is cognizant, in other words, of the black person’s participation in this already-given white-scripted history.  His statements, “I transported myself” and “gave myself up as an object,” acknowledge his active involvement in accepting the white mythology.  Although this particular act is negative, it nonetheless highlights the fact that the black person in a colonialized or similarly oppressive context is in reality not a mere res, a thing determined from the outside and lacking genuine freedom.  Fanon, in fact, makes numerous statements affirming his freedom—a freedom that involves his ability to creatively re-script his own narrative and to refuse to be shackled by a pre-given white narrative.

I find myself one day in the world, and I acknowledge one right for myself:  the right to demand human behavior from the other.  And one duty:  the duty never to let my decisions renounce my freedom.  […] I am not a prisoner of History.  I must not look for the meaning of my destiny in that direction.  I must constantly remind myself that the real leap consists of introducing invention into life.[8]

These declarations in no way undermine Fanon’s schemata, particularly his account of the coming-into-being of a fixed black essence once the racial-epidermal schema has been established. This is the case because his genealogy of racial sedimentation (i.e., black essentialism) or the giving way of Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema to the racial-epidermal schema is not a necessary but a contingent event, which qua contingent can (in theory) be undone or at least significantly dismantled.

In other words, Fanon’s agonized cry of alienation, although genuine and intensely felt, should not be interpreted as a despairing last word.  Rather, Fanon calls for a counter-narrative which refuses to be frozen in a white-scripted past.

Notes

[2] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 200.

[3] See, e.g., Fanon’s critique of Monsieur Mannoni in chapter four of Black Skin, White Masks. Contra Mannoni’s claims, Fanon draws attention to the fact that the very “structure of South Africa is a racist structure” (p. 68).

[4] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 202.

[5] In his chapter, “The Lived Experience of the Black,” Fanon recounts his experience on a train of being “fixed” by a white other—an other which happened to be a child who had already been habituated to see blacks as defined by the white imagination.  As the child’s refrain, “Look! A Negro!” crescendoed forth and came to a close with a fearful questioning of the “Negro’s” next move, Fanon not only experienced the gaze of the white other, he also began to see himself through the white gaze. See Black Skin, White Masks, p. 92.

[6] See Weate, “Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology,” p. 176. See also, Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 92.  Again, Foucault’s account of the effects of being constantly seen but never seeing share similarities with the experience of a black person in a white-dominating context.  “He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.  By this very fact, the external power may throw off its physical weight; it tends to the non-corporal; and, the more it approaches this limit, the more constant, profound and permanent are its effects” (Discipline and Punish, p. 203).

[7] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 92.

[8] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, pp. 203-4.  Fanon goes on to say, “[t]he density of History determines none of my acts.  I am my own foundation.  And it is by going beyond the historical and instrumental given that I initiate my cycle of freedom” (p. 205).

For instance, in a colonialized situation, ‘philautia functions as a substitute for a doctrine of creation inasmuch as the self-constituting I creates a reality and draws all else into it by making it utility or assigning it a use value in the world of the I.’[4] Bringing Maximus’ theological critique to bear on the modern problem of racism, Carter interprets the modern self, driven by its misdirected self-love and armed with its Enlightenment, pseudo-scientific teachings of racial hierarchies, as a variation of Adamic transgression but translated onto the socio-political level.  That is, just as Adam (and Eve) unsatisfied with their sub-creator roles in God’s story, sought to become narrators of their own story, so too the Enlightenment discourse on race offers its own narrative of origins and human destiny.  This narrative, however, is rigidly monochromatic.  When taken up by certain misguided Christians, it transmutes into “a narrative of how human beings came to be bearers of race and how within this narrative whiteness became theologically supreme as a modality of religious dominance and world commerce.”[5]

As both ancient (Maximus) and modern (Fredrick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr.) Christian witnesses proclaim, the Christian narrative, which begins with creation out of love and climaxes with re-creation through the resurrected life of Jesus Christ, is not inherently a discourse of oppression.  It does, however, involve suffering, the shedding of blood and even violent death.  The Christian scriptural account does not present us with stories of perfect human beings.  Rather, it portrays humans—including those who are part of God’s covenant people—in their failings and achievements, in their faithfulness and recalcitrance.  Perhaps the most inexplicable part of the story is why a completely sufficient, content Trinitarian God willingly decides not only to begin and to continue the story but likewise to enter into the story and to assign himself a seemingly tragic role in which he suffers and dies at the hands of those whom he came to save.  Even so, when the Word became incarnate and made himself vulnerable to the vicissitudes and strains of human existence—misunderstanding, rejection, and even death-by-crucifixion—he proclaimed to the world that his Lordship was not the way of colonization or domination.  Rather, this omnipotent Lord set aside his privileges and became a slave, dying a slave’s death yet simultaneously conquering death, of which his resurrection is the definitive sign.[6]

With the incarnation and humiliation of Christ, the corporeal schema and the master/slave dialectic are undone, nullified and ultimately replaced by an inexplicable ‘logic’ of love wherein, paradoxically, a seemingly tragic death opens the way to life.   Christ’s particular, poor, Jewish flesh becomes, in Carter’s words, ‘the site of God’s wealth,’ the place where ethnic, class and even gender ‘binaries’ no longer serve oppressive purposes.[7] In other words, Christ’s flesh becomes the place where human diversity finds unity—a unity that saves difference.  We see this unity-in-diversity in the New Testament itself.  For example, Jewish Christians are not forced to relinquish their Jewish heritage and practices, though both must be re-interpreted in light of the Christ-event.  Nor are Gentile Christians compelled to become Jews and adhere to traditional Jewish customs (e.g., circumcision).  Rather, Christ’s particular Jewish flesh opens the way for all to participate in Trinitarian life.   Unlike philosophical schemata that flatten difference for the sake of unity (or vice versa), Christian conceptual categories, particularly those related to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, provide a model for a unity that upholds difference.  For instance, the horizontal one-and-many union between Christ and his people—people of diverse languages, ethnicities, and social classes—is an image of the one-and-many reality of the Trinity.  At the heart of Christian teaching is the proclamation that vertical and horizontal “communities” of unity-and-difference can (and in the case of the Trinity do) coexist in non-violent, non-dominating, reciprocal relations of love.

In light of the organic relationship that Christianity has with Judaism, the significance of Christ’s Jewish flesh must not be overlooked—a point that brings us back to Fanon.  In his critique of Merleau-Ponty’s generic corporeal schema, Fanon drew attention to the ways in which the white-scripted narrative (mis)colors black skin with multiple negative connotations.  Fanon’s analysis shares structural similarities (and dissimilarities) with the Christian’s emphasis on the importance of Christ’s particular embodiment as a Jew; however, the particularities involved are not racial in the modern, biological meaning of the term.  Christ’s Jewish flesh, nonetheless, exhibits the same polysemous and metonymic capacities—encompassing within it Israel’s covenantal history and reconfiguring that history in light of the central events of his embodied life:  Incarnation, death and resurrection.[8] Unlike the white-imposed narrative which closes off the black person’s freedom, Christ’s Incarnation and invitation to intimate union break down barriers of exclusion and thus open possibilities of freedom which transcend anything philosophy has to offer.

Notes

[2] Of course numerous other factors would have to be taken into account in order to give an adequate explanation of the rise of colonialism and racism.

[3] See also Robert Bernasconi, ‘Who Invented the Concept of Race?  Kant’s Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race’, in Robert Bernasconi (ed), Race, (Oxford:  Blackwell, 2001).  Bernasconi argues that although Kant was not the first to use the term “race,” he was the first to give the term definitional precision.  ‘By setting out clearly the distinction between race and variety, where races are marked by hereditary characteristics that are unavoidable in the offspring, whereas the distinguishing marks of varieties are not always transmitted, Kant introduced a language for articulating permanent differentiations within the notion of species’ (p. 17).

[4] Carter, Race, p. 345.

[5] Carter, Race, p. 348.  See also Carter’s commentary on Maximus’ Epistle 2 and the ways in which it ‘becomes an interesting and unexpected resource for probing whiteness as a racial-colonialist way of ordering the world, that, in fact, deploys the discourse of Christian theology to do its work’ (p. 345).

[6] ‘Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited [ἁρπαγμόϛ], but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross’ (Phil 2:5-8, NRSV).  See also 1 Cor 15 and Rev 1:18.

[7] Carter, Race, p. 368.  St. Paul says something along these lines in his epistle to the Galatians.  Describing the new reality of God’s people, those baptized into Christ who now form an alternative community operating against the grain of the world’s logic, St. Paul says, “[t]here is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28, NRSV).  Of course, I am not suggesting that this alternative community has been realized.  According to Christian belief, the full actualization of such a community will occur only in the eschaton.  However, even in the midst of the already-not-yet eschatological tension that characterizes the Christian life in via, the redemptive benefits of the Christ-event make possible proleptic glimpses of communal life in Christ’s kingdom.

[8] See Luke 24:27 where Jesus says that the law and all of Hebrew Scripture must be re-interpreted Christotelically.  In addition, though Carter does not develop this idea, the giving of Christ’s flesh in the Eucharist is another significant way that the many are continually made one in their present already-not-yet eschatological existence.