Introduction:
In reading
Gordon’s Fanon and the Crisis of European
Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences, I found myself asking
why Gordon felt that he had to write this book. What was he trying to do? The
answer can be found quite early on in the book when he says, and I quote at
length, that:
“This is not a
study on Fanon so much as it is an
opportunity for an engagement with Fanon...
I here regard Fanon as a locus of many pressing questions in contemporary
philosophy –particularly in philosophy of human science. Regarding Fanon as an
opportunity, I regard myself as working
within the spirit of his way of
seeing the world... since Fanon respected most of those who have the
courage to state what they believe. I believe Fanon was a great philosopher and
that his ideas continue to be of great value to other philosophers, cultural
critics, human scientists, and laypeople alike”.
(1995: 2, my emphasis)
One could make the argument that Gordon wrote this book as a demonstration
of his fidelity to Frantz Fanon, but also as a means to bring together and make
visible a philosophical anthropology, or rather parts of it, that he (Fanon)
and Jean-Paul Sartre share. It is important to note that this is by no means,
as Gordon says himself, a continuation of the “long tradition of treating the
thoughts of black philosophers as derivatives of white ones” (Gordon, 1995:
14). Instead what we see so delicately done in the book is an illustration of a
common point of departure in Fanon’s and Sartre’s thought: the belief that it
is through action that we become. What
is meant by this becomes clearer as we go long. The book is made up of five
chapters, or rather mini-essays, which problematise misanthropic philosophy on
people of colour, in particular, and the ways in which human sciences study
human reality. Rather than summarising each essay, a few concepts will be drawn
out from the book so as to critically engage with Gordon’s portrayal of
Fanonian thought and find ways in which we, too, can show fidelity to Fanon and
how he saw the world and our role in it.
“I am overdetermined
from without”[1]
In
Black Skin White Masks, Fanon writes
(1952: 116) "I am overdetermined
from without". What Fanon is
referring to here is the ‘condition’ of being black in a world that is
anti-black. There is an ambiguity, a paradox and a tragedy at play when black
people only exist in the form of negation. Fanon would say we exist so as not
to exist by being too much and simultaneously being not enough (Gordon, 1995:
6). The problem with human sciences, origins of which are found in Europe, is
that they departed, and in many ways still do, with a presupposition or an a priori knowledge of being human. Put differently, there is an invasive
normative standard that has been universalised on how to be-in-the-world.
People of colour tick the relevant criteria on what on it means to be human,
except for the one that counts: being white. And what it means to be white is
to be the judge, preacher, peace-maker, martyr,
authority of moral goodness, rationality and ultimately, being human (Frye,
1992). This is why Gordon (1995: 6) says that Fanon was “not white enough,
which means he is not human enough”. Does this not pose a crisis in Europe, in reason and in our humanity? What happens when the
philosophy of human science finds its legitimacy in racial misanthropy? Humanistic
disciplines, ironically, pride themselves as being an adversary of natural
sciences, which failed to take into account human agency and the varying ways
in which knowledge is produced, when they themselves (practitioners of human
sciences) perpetuate the disease of
exclusion; of being critical of other sciences but not of themselves; and of
“identifying the symptoms, but shrink cowardly from the task involved in
indentifying the disease” (Gordon, 1995: 7).
With such a legacy, is it no wonder that the reality
of ‘Black Tax’ exists with us even to this very day? ‘Black Tax’ refers to the
idea that people of colour have to work twice as hard as white people so as to
be taken seriously and the need to perform tasks just as well as white people,
if not better (Duane, 2007). ‘Black Tax’
is everywhere- in the workplace, schools, in conversation, etc. White people
have the privilege of being assumed to be competent
candidates for whatever they choose to do, be it a teacher, a manager or
waitress, until proven otherwise (MaKaiser, 2011: 454). It is the inverse for black people in a
white supremacist society, which says: ‘s/he must not have a heavy accent; is
eloquent; must not, God forbid have a politics, let alone one rooted in
activism (we cannot have strikes!); and whose qualifications must be tenfold.
We cannot assume, you see, that they are like this, they have to prove it to
us.’ This, Fanon says, is the “the fact of blackness”, where racist reasoning
not only denies me a place to belong, a place to be happy, but denies me being, full stop. As he puts it, “reason...
[has] made a fool of me. As the other put it, when I was present, it was not;
when it was there, I was no longer. [We] played cat and mouse” (1952: 118-120).
It is no wonder that in light of this reality, this degradation of humanity and
the indignity in how we see and treat each other, that Fanon rejects ontology-
it is fundamentally racist in its misunderstanding of what makes us human and
therefore, it is anti-Human (Gordon, 1995: 10-12). To those who argue that
Fanon’s embodied critique of Euro-reason and philosophy is where the
conversation ends, he or she would be in error. Let us turn to Fanon’s
existential phenomenology to see why.
“Existentialism Is a Humanism”[2]
Perhaps a way of
explaining Fanon’s existential phenomenology[3] is
through Sartre’s conception of existentialism. Sartre explains that
existentialism, at the very least, can be defined as a doctrine that believes
that existence precedes essence. In other words, we exist first, before we have
any idea of who we are or who we ought to be. It is through our experiences and
actions that we are able to define ourselves. Prior that projection, or the act
of creating and becoming, we do not exist. Put simply, we are what we make
ourselves. Sartre therefore agrees with Husserlian phenomenology in so far as
the starting point in investigating human reality should depart from our
subjectivity. Gordon (1995: 16 [sic]) argues that for Sartre “all investigating
involves a form of self-reflection”. I have the urge to agree. Is it not so
that human beings need to personalise issues, first, before we can find ways to
address those issues? This might be a grand generalisation, but I believe it
still has merit. For example, when we see someone suffering, be it a street kid
who is hungry, or someone rumbling through your trash for food, we tend to
think: ‘wow, that is really horrible, I can’t imagine how that person
does that, I don’t think I could survive living that way’. We
tend to reflect on the suffering of others with regards to what we would
do and how we would feel. John Holloway (2012) shares a similar
sentiment in his idea of ‘the scream’, presumably inspired by a painting titled
‘The Scream’ by Norwegian artists Edvard Munch. He says that ‘the scream’, the
condition of its possibility being the agony and despair we see in the world
and eventually embody, is and must be the starting point of scientific and
theoretical thinking. If we do not personalise an issue, to some level, it is
easy to become desensitised to it, but we will return to this point further
below.
Sartre, however,
is critical of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology in studying consciousness or the
appearance of ‘things’ in isolation and in our case which would translate to the
bracketing of individual subjectivity from the presence of others. In other words,
the subjectivity of the individual is constituted by the subjectivities of
others. Sartre says and I quote at length (1945: 45):
“I cannot obtain
any truth whatsoever about myself, except through the mediation of another. The
other is indispensible to my existence, and equally so to any knowledge I have
of myself. Under these conditions, the intimate discovery of myself is at the
same time the revelation of the other as a freedom which confronts mine, and
which cannot think or will without doing so either for or against me. Thus, at
once, we find ourselves in a world which is, let us say, that of
“inter-subjectivity”. It is in this world that man has to decide what he is and
what others are”.
Fanonian thought
undoubtedly faces a peculiar problem, when it is quite clear that there is a
need to suspend the ontology that grounds human sciences and its normative
conception of the human condition, but the same time recognises that human
existence is contingent on human relationality (Gordon, 1995: 34). Contingency becomes a problem when what makes
part of my subjectivity is the denial of my existence, “[f]or not only must the
black man be black; he must be black in
relation to the white man” (Fanon, 1952: 109-110). As a way out of this
peculiarity, Fanon calls for a radical phenomenology that is critical,
self-reflective, a meta-stable methodology, if you like, in the study of human
being. To put is simply, what Fanon is proposing is for the philosophy of human
science to take seriously “the open door of every consciousness” (Fanon. 1952:
181). Fanon’s existential phenomenology is a Humanism, a critical Humanism that
recognises that with the study of humans, there is always an ‘incompleteness’
and the possibility of human
subjectivity, of becoming truly human lies in having taken thought and being actional (Gordon, 1995: 12; 69-70). It
is important to note, however, that Fanon critical philosophy is not without an
element of realism, he is acutely aware of the ever-present threat to our
humanity.
“The Recognition of the Constant Threat of Bad
Faith”[4]
To better
understand the concept of ‘bad faith’, we need to engage with the Sartrean understanding
of freedom and responsibility. Sartre explains that freedom lies in the escape
of pre-determinism, external standards and normative criteria of the human
condition. How can we be free, when “each one of us
chooses certain things [that] determine specific finalities with the scope of
given possibilities and parameters”? (Negri and Casarino, 2008: 85). Put
differently, there is no freedom when human beings are a function of a telos, when we are driven by a specific
purpose based on the conditions of the time (2008: 84). Each individual or each
society has to pursue a given end. For example, scientific socialists believe
that socialism is something that comes after capitalism; that there has to be
phases of socio-economic development. Assumptions around ‘progress’
silence the reality that different societies evolve differently; some evolve in
non-teleological ways. Would having a non-teleological telos not create the
condition for the possibility for freedom? Negri and Casarino argue and Sartre
would agree that “if we conceived of the world from the standpoint of such a
telos, there is nothing for us to pursue in it aside from freedom” (2008: 84). Freedom does not
mean having the option to choose between A or B. With an open consciousness,
every human being has potential of thought, creativity and imagination that
breeds pro-activity to create options c, d, e, f, etc. Fanon’s critical
humanism, however reminds us, that in the creation of these options, we must
constantly think and re-think, be meta-reflective about the possibilities of
change in what constitutes these options. There is freedom in this
non-teleological telos, because it constantly re-evaluates itself to be
faithful to what it means to be human.
What this means is that in no
longer being constrained by knowledge and reasoning that is based on external
conceptions of being, we are
responsible for choosing our self-determination. Keeping true to his
existential humanism, Sartre say and I quote (1945, sic):
“Our
responsibility... concerns (hu)mankind as a whole... When we say that [every
person] chooses [him/herself], we do mean that every one of us must choose
[ourselves]; but by that we also mean that in choosing for [him/herself],
he/she chooses for all [hu]mankind”.
Both Sartre and
Fanon recognise, however, that freedom has a paradoxical function: it can be
both productive and regressive. Similarly, Fanon says that ‘bad faith’
manifests in the hidden decision not to decide (Gordon, 1995: 12). Sartre
explains that it is ‘bad faith’ when one uses their freedom to deny the existence
of freedom. ‘Bad faith’ can also be understood as a form of self-deception,
self-objectification when we rationalise our existence according to a belief
system that not only imposes itself on human existence, but also denies the
dignity of others. Put simply, it is in bad faith to choose certainty, because
we avoid the discomfort, the fear, the vulnerability of knowing the ‘other’,
determining ourselves and subsequently, letting others determine themselves.
Fanon puts it well (1952):
“Sometimes people
hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence
that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would
create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance.
And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and
even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.”
Is mass self-deception not a reality in contemporary South Africa?
Do we not choose to remain silent and ignore the violence that we witness
everyday when looking at the outskirts of our cities? Do we not choose to be
desensitised every Thursday when we walk past men, women and children digging
through our garbage for food before it is collected? Do we not allow those around
to speak about abject poverty as though it is only the doing of others and not
of ourselves? Does the South African society question how our reality has been
processed, like food, by the factories of capitalism? The truth is difficult is
swallow.
Concluding remarks:
In writing my response for the book Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the
Human Sciences, I have admit I had a difficult time engaging with the
concepts. This is by no means a reflection on the intellectual and important
work that Gordon has produced, but rather because while reading it I was
troubled by the recent events in South Africa, particularly with the Marikana
Massacre. After having finished the book, I attempted to make the
phenomenological move of beginning from a place of subjectivity.
I started thinking: “what is important you?” I
even put it as my Blackberry Messenger status to constantly remind myself that
I cannot let this question go. But the question on its own was not enough,
because I am not an island. Following questions became “why has Marikana
affected me, my peers, friends, lecturers and comrades as it has? Why have we
taken that Event so personally?” For a
few days, I carried these questions with me, until I found my answer when a group
of us attend a debate hosted by the Rhodes Debating Society on “Why is Mandela
Day a Problem?”. Camalita Naicker (a friend), in response to the debate, said
something that I could not shake. She said “what people don’t understand is
that politics is personal. How can it not be when it is in the everyday?” In
grappling with what she said I realised that knowledge has a sociological base,
it does not just come from nowhere. It is based and originates from society and
we use such knowledge to perpetuate and sustain our interests. In essence
knowledge comes from people and with people the element of power is involved.
And politics, at least in the anthropological definition, means power over
people. The political determines how society is structured; how it functions;
the limits and opportunities- what we can and cannot do. Thus the political and
human influence can never be escaped. With politics being personal, it is no
wonder that Marikana affected us all so deeply, it was an attack on all of us;
on our humanity. What we can learn from
Fanon and Sartre’s philosophical anthropology is that Marikana and the violence
that we see every day is our responsibility and deny that truth would be in
‘bad faith’. The teleology of the political and the philosophy of human
sciences determine us in so far as we allow them. If we are to take Fanon
seriously, the way forward is through action.
Bibliography
Gordon, R., 1995, Fanon
and the Crisis of European Man: An essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences, New
York and London: Routledge.
Fanon, F., 1967 [1952] Black
Skin White Masks, London: Grove Press Inc.
Frye, M., 1992, White Woman Feminist, Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism, Berkeley: Crossing Press.
McKaiser, E., 2011, How Whites Should Live in This Strange Place, South African Journal of Philosophy, 30(4):
452-461.
Negri, A and
Casarino, C. (2008) In the Praise of the
Common: A Conversation on Philosophy and Politics, University of Minnesota
Press: London.
[1] From Fanon’s Black Skin White
Masks pp. 116.
[2] The title of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1945 essay on existentialism
published in the Marxist Internet
Archive.
[3] Phenomenology is the study of consciousness and how it experiences
phenomena from a subjective point of view.
[4] Gordon, “Existential Phenomenology and History”, pp. 19.
