Fanon on Recognition

Abstract

F argues that the concept of race interferes with human social and political development because the concept leads to an internalization of inequality in both the black and the white psyche and hence misrecognition. A just social and political organization can only be born out of a struggle in which the black man asserts himself as both psychically and politically independent of the white man and hence as a source and also an object of recognition. This Fanon gives his general diagnosis of the problem of race in Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and proposes a solution in The Wretched of the Earth (1961).

Note on Terminology: F uses the term “le Noir” (“the black man”) and “le Blanc” (“the white man”) as dialectical terms which are in place until a “new humanism” which transcends these categories can be achieved.