Mlamuli
Hlatshwayo
Sharpley-Whiting’s
text attempts to critically engage with Frantz Fanon’s work and contextualize
it within the discourse of Feminism. The text rejects simplistic and binary
interpretations of Fanon’s canon, and offers an alternative perspective in not
only arguing about a comprehensive Feminist understanding of Fanon, but in also
positioning him as a feminist intellectual (Sharpley-Whiting, 1998: 24). Perhaps
what is interesting about Sharpley-Whiting’s text is the manner in which she
complicates the narrative of Feminism by showing us the different “Feminisms”
that are there, and the various modes of interpretation that they adopt when
engaging with Fanon. This, one could argue, is significant in helping us
understand not only the actual critique they level at Fanon, but also shows us the
importance of one’s social position in society and where they are located as
being key to the kind of critique they level (and to the Feminist theory they
subscribe to), especially regarding their focus, issue and how they engage with
it. This is especially seen, and Sharpley-Whiting engages well with this, on
how Radical Black Feminist is largely concerned with the material and daily
lived experiences of Black women, due largely to the institutionalized
marginalization of minorities in America, especially African American and
Latino communities. This critical review will focus on the chapter, “Fanon,
Conflicts, Feminisms”, especially in showing the various ways in which Feminist
scholars have misread Fanon. The review will also be grappling with the idea of
white women, sexual violence and Negrophobia in context to the Black male body
as a signifier of illicit sex and illogical, irrational violence - and the
consequences of that colonial understanding on the contemporary.
