Mikaela Erskog
“I shall speak about women's writing: about what it will do.
Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing,
from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies-for the
same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself
into the text-as into the world and into history-by her own movement.” -
Hélène Cixous, (1976)
Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms by T.
Denean Sharpley-Whiting is a feminist critique of feminist critiques of Frantz
Fanon’s corpus of work. By evaluating how various feminist critics and their
theoretical frameworks interpreted Fanon’s work, Sharpley-Whiting aims to
strengthen feminist thought by revealing the limits of certain arguments and
the potential strength of others.
I would argue that Sharpley-Whiting’s text places itself within
the lineage of critical humanism as she, much like Fanon, does the important
task of “questioning of the questioning of [humankind]” (Gordon, 1995: 10). In
doing so, I believe Sharpley-Whiting acts in good faith to feminist thought, as
she reveals the shortcomings of certain feminist critiques that tend to conceal
themselves in order to develop a critical feminist approach that can facilitate
the application of feminist values of the liberation, inclusion,
self-creativity of women and oppressed humanity.
Furthermore, Sharpley-Whiting’s analysis reflects a critical
humanism that strengthens her feminist modality as although she makes it clear
that there are aspects of Fanon’s work that may fall short when read by
feminist critics (e.g. heteronormativity and hyper-masculine language), her
critique demonstrates an understanding of the need for truly productive,
liberatory feminist theory and praxis to centre itself not only on the
liberation of women, but of the liberation of women being the simultaneous
liberation of all oppressed people from patriarchal (colonial) domination
(Sharpley-Whiting, 1998: 9 & 24).
Sharpley-Whiting’s
reads Fanon holistically and according to his intentions and therefore is able
to see how Fanon’s writing serves a humanist project that was “not only advocating gender equity and liberation, but representative of a
profeminist consciousness”
(Sharpley-Whiting, 1998: 9). Sharpley-Whiting recognises that Fanon’s works are
by no means feminist texts. However, coming from a black feminist thought which
“[seeks] “the destruction
of all
systems of oppression" and the liberation of the most wretched of
nonblacks, nonfemales, and the poor”, Sharpley-Whiting recognises the
importance of Fanon’s emancipatory philosophies as a means by which all
oppressed people have the ability and right to self-define and create their own
reality (Sharpley-Whiting, 1998: 22). To reiterate, Sharpley-Whiting (1998: 24)
stated:
“Fanon believed that revolution would
transform the exploitative and oppressive spheres of formal and informal
political, social, and economic life for men, women, and children-humanity from
the bottom up. But rather than speak of Fanon as a feminist, it is perhaps more
appropriate, as the introduction suggests, to speak of Fanon's radically
humanist profeminist consciousness.”
At the
8th Annual Robert Sobukwe Memorial Lecture (22 May 2014, King
William’s Town), Pan-Africanist and feminist writer and activist Pumla Gqola,
applying Sobukwe’s political approach to social issues on the continent,
expressed the need for African’s to look for the patterns of social actors/ phenomena rather than focus on instances. This may be taking the idea
slightly out of context, but ultimately, I believe that Sharpley-Whiting
performs an authentic feminist critique because she avoids latching onto isolated instances where Fanon may not
coincide with feminist thought. Rather, Sharpley-Whiting focuses on the coherent patterns within Fanon’s works
in order “to acknowledge and put to use the best of Frantz Fanon”
(Sharpley-Whiting, 1998: 74).
Fanon and human agency as feminist praxis
In
terms of the opening quote by French feminist Hélène Cixous [who could be
problematized as part of the legacy of what Sharpley-Whiting identifies as
Euro-American lit-crit feminists], I would argue that Fanon is in fact pro-feminist
because he advocates the ability of all people to make themselves anew through
authentic praxis as well as self-writing (i.e. of ‘putting themselves into
history by their own movement). Furthermore, although it is not the task of men
to do this work (as women should not need to depend on men in this manner),
Fanon performs a pro-feminist role by making women visible in the liberation
narrative.
Sharpley-Whiting’s advocates that Fanon facilitates this necessary
conversation about women and women’s issues in a time and place when the
everyday lives of women were systematically silenced and their conflicts went unaddressed (Sharpley-Whiting, 1998: 16).
Although not everyone may agree with how Fanon goes about identifying or
addressing women’s issues (Algerian nationalist feminists taking issue with the
‘mythology’ of the armed Algerian, female freedom fighter), Sharpley-Whiting (1998:
74) recognises:
“That a male writer [choosing] to chronicle
women's activism demonstrates an awareness of the importance of women and their
contributions at historical moments and to historical movements. It represents
equally a resistance to what feminist critics have long pointed to as the patriarchal
tendency to exclude women from history. Algerian women entered themselves into
history. History was made by the women. Fanon
has merely related Algerian women's
resistance in a way that can be remembered, recalled, and corrected by women in
their present quests for self-actualization.” [emphasis added].
Sharpley-Whiting indicates that although it
seems as though feminist thought is ‘secondary’ to the project of human
emancipation, Fanon takes women seriously and understands the fight against
colonialism to be the fight against patriarchy; Fanon sees the fate of women to
be tied to the fate of humanity, and as such promotes serious pro-feminist
critical theories of liberation.
Although the image of the Algerian female
revolutionary, armed and deadly, may not be representative of all Algerian women during the 1954-61
Algerian war, the fact that even one such woman existed is something all women could hold onto and begin to
reimagine themselves in their own terms. Sharpley-Whiting’s conversation with
Fanon and feminist critics facilitates a critical
and authentic self-writing of herself
and theorizing of an approach to being that is all-inclusive and liberatory by
virtue of women historically inhabiting the spaces designated for the wretched
of the Earth.
Bibliography
Cixous,
H. “The Laugh of the Medusa”, Translated by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, Chicago Journal, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer,
1976), pp. 875-893.
Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean, Frantz
Fanon: Conflict & Feminism. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers:
Oxford, 1998.
