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.
One could argue that one of the strengths of
Sharpley-Whiting’s paper lies in the manner in which she seeks to critically
engage with the Feminist scholarship on Fanon, and her attempt to debunk some
of the canon and their misinterpretation of him. What this shows is the
skillful manner in which she is able to engage with a significant amount of
Fanonian literature on Feminism by trying to bring them in conversation with
each other, while being able to portray her alternative interpretation. This
ensures that we are able to not only understand but also locate Fanon within
the Feminist school of thought, and be able to think and appreciate his
commitment to an emancipatory political project that was inclusive of
women. This is especially seen in how
Sharpley-Whiting critically engages through a comparative analysis with the
Feminist scholarships of Liberal Euro-American Lit-Crit, Algerian Nationalist
Feminism and also the Radical US Black Feminism in context to Fanon, in not
only showing their ideological underpinnings, but also their limitations and
structural challenges that they are all facing. In this comparative analysis,
what stood out for me was the manner in which for the Nationalist Feminists in
Algeria, women and the veil became symbols and signifiers of resistance who
were active in the liberation war, and played an instrument role in the
independence of Algeria (Sharpley-Whiting, 1998: 20). However post
independence, the actional women were rendered silent and submissive to not
only culture and religion, but also to the new nationalist state that needed
women to perform the role of transmitters of national culture, and the de facto
representatives of national identity. Thus the postcolonial Algerian nation,
which the women played an active role in decolonizing, became an oppressive
machinery which subjugated and rendered them subalterns again, this time under
the new political dispensation - sacrificing them and their Rights at the altar
of “progress” for the new nation.
In addition,
what is interesting about Sharpley-Whiting’s text, and Fanon deals well with
this in A Dying Colonialism, is the
manner in which the Algerian veil changes its meaning and significance during
and after the independence. The veil, like the Palestinian scarf (the Kuffiyeh) which post World War II, was
seeing as a symbol of terror, violence and malice (especially during the
leadership of Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organization), and
now is universally perceived as symbol of international solidarity with the
plight of the Palestinians, one could argue that the same paradigm shift was
seeing in perception in how the Algerian veil (and Women) were symbols of
liberation and resistance during the colonial period in Algeria, however
postcolonial - the new state - the veil is now being used as a signifier of
culture and ethics that the nation wants to uphold, thus women are forced to
reverse the gains made in the revolution, and the veil transforms (in meaning
and significance) again and become the symbol of oppression, conformity, and
national sacrilege. Thus this relationship of signifiers and signified entraps
women and ensures that their position not only remains challenging, but
actually becomes attached to culture and religion so as to ensure its
sustainability.
Sharpley-Whiting
grapples well with the notion of white women, sexual violence and Negrophobia,
especially in tying it all together as a colonial construct, serving the
function of not only sustaining the colonial project, but also in ensuring the
paranoid subjugation and oppression of female (and male) bodies. This is seeing
in Fanon and Sharpley-Whiting’s argument that the Black body was depersonalized
and portrayed as an instrument of lust and uncontrolled sexual exploitations
which sought to rape and violate the female White body. This ensured that White
women were paranoid of black men, with novelists like Toni Morrison arguing
that this paranoia bordered on lust (Sharpley-Whiting, 1998: 13). Perhaps what
is excellent about Sharpley-Whiting’s analysis of Bodies (both Black and white)
as spaces of colonial representations and its stereotypes, is the manner in
which she engages with the colonial project itself as a conquest over and
penetration into bodies and lands, indicates Feminist consciousness in how the
colonization of the land itself, is shown to be connected to the use, misuse
and abuse of black (and white female) bodies as performance spaces of the
colonial project to entrench itself and leave its mark.
Bibliography
Sharpley-Whiting,
T. D., 1998, Frantz Fanon:
Conflicts & Feminisms, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
