Frantz Fanon on Identity Drama

Our identities are shaped and exist in relation to others. The way others relate to me and the way I can relate to them is fundamental to my sense of self, of who I am. When relationships play such a crucial role, some amount of drama is inevitable. However, we can become the prisoners of an image constructed for and about us by others. If the image, the story, the myth is sufficiently rooted and spread in society, it can amount to an identity drama trap for us. How can we avoid this trap? Can we?

Frantz Omar Fanon, a psychiatrist and philosopher, explored the themes of racism and colonialism, partly based on personal experience, arguing that these are systemic problems woven into the very fabric of society. He was born in 1925 on the Caribbean island of Martinique under French colonial rule into a family of African, Martinican, and Alsatian descent. He died at the young age of 36. 

In one of his most influential works, the book “Black Skin, White Masks”, Fanon analyses identity dilemmas created by the dominant cultures and imposed upon those who are meant to stay inside these traps. Referring to Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophical investigations of antisemitism, Fanon writes, “Here is all the ambiguity that Sartre describes. Certain pages of Anti-Semite and Jew are some of the finest we have ever read… because the problem they raise moves us to the very core”. Then he quotes Sartre in a longer passage from which I have selected the following lines:

“It is we who constrain him to choose to be a Jew whether through flight from himself or through self-assertion; it is we who force him into the dilemma of Jewish authenticity or inauthenticity.”

_{Sartre in Fanon (1967, p. 158)}

How one can escape this prison of an imposed image? How can one maintain the integrity of one’s sense of self without falling into the trap of identifying in relation to the forced image (either by becoming its victim or by rebelling against it), and yet still experience oneself as a member of society, feel that one belongs, if it is this society that creates and imposes the image? How, if at all, can one avoid this identity drama trap?

Some would say, one cannot. Fanon’s own response is somewhat vague, too abstract at first glance. Nonetheless, it is interesting. Here is what he says, now in reference to the identity dilemma experienced by a black man in a dominant white culture, as Fanon puts it:

“What is happening is this. Since I realize that the black man is the symbol of sin, I start hating the black man. But I realize that I am a black man. I have two ways of escaping the problem. Either I ask people not to pay attention to the color of my skin; or else, on the contrary, I want people to notice it. I then try to esteem what is bad—since, without thinking, I admitted that the black man was the color of evil. In order to put an end to this neurotic situation where I am forced to choose an unhealthy, conflictual solution, nurtured with fantasies, that is antagonistic—inhuman, in short—there is but one answer: skim over this absurd drama that others have staged around me; rule out these two elements that are equally unacceptable; and through the particular, reach out for the universal.”

_{Fanon (1967, p. 174, emphasis added)}

Fanon wants to avoid the trap of identity dilemma altogether, that “absurd drama that others have staged” around the black person. The way to do it, he proposes, is to not engage with the imposed dilemma and instead to reach for the universal through the particular. What does Fanon mean? I interpret his idea in the context of social criticism: the dominant cultural narratives can be challenged by holding a metaphorical mirror to their flawed beliefs and misconceptions. Since a reflection of particular instances is better visible in a mirror than trying to see there a universal idea abstractly, each instance has the potential to bring the generally faulty narratives to our attention, help us recognise, understand, and, hopefully, change them.

keep exploring! 

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