Onto-Phenomenology in Chapter 7 of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (Pseudo-Philosophy)

‘Identity’, ‘History’ and ‘Dialectics’ in the Post-Dialectical Era (ORIGINALLY WRITTEN FOR ‘Francophone Existentialism’, Fall 2022, ARCADIA UNIVERSITY)

11/13/2022 (Substantial Revision 8/14/2024); 2875 words

By John Corry  

Onto-Phenomenology in Chapter 7 of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks

ABSTRACT: The concepts ‘identity’, ‘history’ and ‘dialectics’ are central to Fanon’s argument against colonial oppression in Chapter 7 of Black Skin, White Masks. This essay attempts to analyze Fanon’s thought on these three concepts in the context of an ‘onto-phenomenology’ contingent on the advent of modern computer technology, and may simultaneously be understood as an introduction to its methodology. ‘Identity’ is first analyzed through the lens of Carl Jung and the process of paired oppositions (syzygies). Of the potentially infinite number of syzygies, ‘self/other’ is understood as the primary tenet of this concept in Fanon. From there, the interplay between history and dialectics in Hegel and subsequently through the lens of onto-phenomenology leads to a reconstitution of ‘focus/context’ in Fanon’s dialectic of ‘lived experience’.

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In Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, one encounters a number of ontological and phenomenal questions, specifically in the context of racism and colonial psychopathology. Among the subjective foundations of these questions include the concepts ‘identity’, ‘history’ and ‘dialectics’. This essay attempts to assess Fanon’s understanding of these concepts as displayed in chapter 7 of Black Skin, White Masks[1], and to then apply them to the modern age[2]. By focusing on these three concepts in particular, the hope is to gain a better understanding of how to apply Fanon’s thinking to the increasingly difficult, however potentially optimistic, World we encounter in America circa the Twenty-First century.

Via Carl Jung, ‘identity’ refers to the phenomenal object/subject of ‘selfhood’[3]. (Fair warning: these ‘syzygies’ [paired opposites; the ‘thought between’ two presupposed opposites] are going to become more frequent and are intended to become more accessible as the paper moves forward[4].) The self, as an opposing force to the collective unconscious and comprised of an ego and a multitude of unconscious-subconscious archetypes[5], and the ‘identity’ of the self is what the self uses to refer to itself. For Fanon, this archetypal system implies a fundamentally oppressed/enforced hierarchy wherein, for this ‘experience’ (i.e. any present ‘moment’), “the question is always whether he is less intelligent than I, blacker than I, or less good than I.”[6] The ‘good’, in other words, as a moral judgment, always infers a dialectical conflict. As a result, identity becomes both a process signifying a subject/object, as well as the pure value-indication of either a ‘subject’ or an ‘object’ ‘in-itself’, or a strictly ontological representation of an ‘unconscious/subconscious’ (or: potentiality/possibility for a ‘consciousness’).

Chapter 7 of Black Skin, White Masks expands this definition. Fanon suggests a contemporary-dialectical[7] process of applying the concept identity to ‘self/other’ than the above ‘representation’ may at first imply: “The black man is comparaison… He is comparaison in the sense that he is constantly preoccupied with self-assertion and the ego ideal.”[8] Meanwhile, the distinction between ‘self’ and ‘other’ lies in Fanon’s ‘self-assertion’ and ‘the ego ideal’: the conflux of ‘individual’ and ‘collective’ is codependent/coexistent, though logico-dialectically opposed  (or: where the logic of the supposition ‘individual’ or ‘collective’ is presupposed by the possibility for the dialectical exercise)[9]. While one could take Fanon’s assertion to be a combination of the two for sake of a premodern-activist connection to ‘reality’ in the material sense alone, the ‘existential’ point isn’t so morally relative: “every self-positioning or self-fixation maintains a relationship of dependency on the collapse of the other. It’s on the ruins of my entourage that I build my virility.”[10] Only through ‘self-assertion’ is any ‘ego ideal’ postulated in ‘individual experience’ (or ‘collective representation’, in the above terminology), and vice versa.

This raises an issue relating the ontological validity of identity/entity in the face of the purely phenomenological distinction between ‘subject’ and ‘object’. If identity/entity ‘exist’, ‘subject/object’ is its phenomenal component; ‘subject/object’ is the two-dimensional representation of the three-dimensional identity/entity. However, where a material understanding may suggest the distinction purely metaphysical, this additional aspect of ‘purely ontological experience as against the dimensional’ suggests an evolution in the sphere (of ‘identity’, or its more ontologically simple opposite, ‘entity’) beyond the mere survivalist approach of classical metaphysics or even a modern theoretical activism as against pseudo-practical ‘reality’.

Thus, Fanon’s take does not rest on the mere exclamation of particular historical truths concerning material ‘survival’ or the inevitability of conflict between ‘self’ and ‘other’. This, he addresses through G.W.F. Hegel in the second half of the chapter. “They recognize each other as mutually recognizing each other.”[11] Self and Other operate on similar logical grounds, but with opposed dialectical inference, and the hierarchical (complexly survival-focused) juxtaposition has implications on ‘conscious’ perception. Fanon divides this ‘self/other’ complexity into two dimensionally varied aspects: history and dialectics[12]. The former may follow more directly from ‘identity’ in that it contorts the idea into an ontological certainty/uncertainty only subsequently focused in comparison with its etymological opposite, ‘entity’, where the latter considers the syzygy equally disseminated. History recalls what has been uncertain in the past and decrees it ‘certain’, while the dialectical process bridges the gap in any present moment. In Hegel, ‘history’ involves two intuitions; in one: an ‘in-time’ (simultaneously past/present/future and ‘in the moment’) ‘narrative’ construction of ‘facts’ (or: logic/spirit, in Hegel), and, in the other: an ‘evolutionary’ aspect of its own dialectical makeup (i.e. its focus/context ‘in-itself’)[13]. ‘History’, on the one hand, is a set of facts dissecting what has materially ‘happened’ in the past as what has led to the present, and, on the other: history is (‘trans-dimensionally’ or as a vehicle for potential dimensional transcendence[14]) of an ‘evolving’ nature of its own, with its own phenomenological complications influencing the conscious/subconscious bedrocks moving individuals/collectives more broadly outside/within, any specific focus/context.

While Fanon does not dwell on this for long in Black Skin, White Masks, it serves as an anchor from which he argues the ontological freedom of the oppressed person. “Each consciousness of self is seeking absoluteness. It wants to be recognized as an essential value outside of life, as transformation of subjective certainty onto objective truth.”[15] Self has become a dialectical syzygy of a three-dimensional ‘objective/subjective’ nature. But how may we take this certain/uncertain ‘essential value’ of ‘subjective/objective conscious ‘consciousness’? The ‘value/meaning’ axiom of any historical account is always the most closely related to survival, the primordial mover behind all logic[16]. Dialectically, however, where concepts become equal in validity but unequal in relative complexity (whereas the opposite is true of logic), such ‘survival’ becomes imperative to not only to the elongation of history, but the existence of ‘consciousness’ as well[17].

For Fanon, ‘dialectics’ of the Hegelian (logical, pseudo-practical) variety, is ‘self-consciousness’ by way of subconscious recognition[18]. Contemporarily, we may divide dialectics post-Hegel into two variations: one in terms of ‘dialectic’ on the whole (or: ‘in-itself’), and the other in terms of either Hegel or Fanon’s Philosophy specifically. The latter denotes something more akin to a ‘subconsciously’ psychological display and is left for another essay[19]. However, in the former: ‘Hegelian dialectic’ refers to the next logical step of the practice following the traditional, Platonic ‘dialectic’[20]. Where Plato postulated the practice of learning concepts as possible/potentialized through a binary opposition towards a subsequently open-ended ‘consciousness’ ‘in-itself’ (or: as a ‘consciousness’ may come to understand a concept through juxtaposing two concepts against one another alone), Hegel adds a third component: that of some possible/potential ‘goal/ambience’ of (or ‘within-which’) such a process, or, alternatively, the focus/context either prior to, or proceeding which, the process becomes ‘open-ended’ in a broader sphere concerning consciousness as a whole[21]. In other words, concerning dialectic more generally/‘in-itself’: the juxtaposition of opposing concepts to arrive at new concepts does not stop at the juxtaposition itself but proceeds only once it’s been made within the focus/context of the process ‘in-itself/for-itself’, or, for Fanon, within any potential hierarchical power-psychology. (Another way to think about the ‘in-itself-for-itself’: as the conflux of ‘selfhood’ and purely ontological purpose, the ‘experience’ as backed up against ‘time’. Similarly: the Hegelian ‘Philosophy of History’ does not stop at defining ‘facts of history’, but rather of adding the consideration of them as an ongoing process under a context/focus as equal-to the ‘narrative’ aspect.)

For Hegel, and to Fanon’s consternation, this trifold juxtaposition starts with the ‘conflict’ concept combined with the slave/master ontology from which the ‘consciousness’ releases the tension of outgrowing unconscious/subconscious apperception[22]. In Fanon, this is the dialectical basis from which the ‘lived experience’ of oppressed-personhood manifests. “Only conflict and the risk it implies can, therefore, make human reality in-itself-for-itself come true.”[23] The juxtaposition of the ‘self-assured’ and the ‘ego ideal’ is only possible under a context/focus which has been freed from onto-phenomenological external/internal oppression, or the conflict having been relocated from the purely phenomenal (‘pre-dimensional’, unconscious) ‘otherness’.

Contemporarily, this trifold juxtaposition may be taken with any ‘focus/context’ for its foundation. For example: in the case of deciphering ‘identity’ on the internet in 2022, we may start with the spatial/temporal juxtaposition between ‘existence’ in two dimensions as against three; in the case of modern Western political discourse: ‘politics’ in a moral/ethical framework as a dialectically misbalanced approbation of ‘conscious/unconscious’ prohibitions[24]. In any case, it keeps in Fanon’s logic of an ontologically evolving ‘Philosophy of Oppression’, which, in this case, would siphon a similar dialectical framework as Hegel’s aforementioned ‘Philosophy of History’. (This, of course, in the sense that any contemporary iteration of ‘history’ relies upon who existentially [in terms of time-against-death] lives to ‘write’ the History.) Fanon’s more dialectical point (one of several, but nevertheless) is that the contemporary lived-experience of Oppressed peoples is both framed, as well as succeeded by, the ongoing influence of primordial, material survival, the likes of which has always, ‘two-dimensionally’ been progressed primarily by those with the material resources to both ‘write the history’, and to influence the results (or: ‘products’ or artistic prospects[25]) of onto-evolving history unhindered by any inability to view the subject/object as broadly as consciously possible.

But such derivations are for another time. The existential ‘blur’ between the World of the pseudo-logically Oppressed and post-dialectical reality has greatly expanded in the age of computer technology, with the concepts ‘identity’, ‘history’ and ‘dialectics’ playing major roles in the ontological dissemination of potentially perceived, three-dimensionally ‘conscious’ phenomena. If we hope to overcome the injustice, confusion, and division we’ve seen in recent years, analyzing these concepts onto-phenomenologically and in-juxtaposition via Fanon’s Philosophy of Oppression, provides an avenue for a post-Hegelian dialectic in an irreverently ‘onto-evolving’ world. Beyond ‘philosophy’ alone (the sole totally ‘onto’-‘phenomenological’ axiom), or even any ‘critique’ involving ontological oppression or racial inequality more generally, Fanon’s thinking as displayed in Chapter 7 of Black Skin, White Masks is as educational as it is post-Hegelian dialectical: the goal is not to ‘find an answer’, but to maintain a process wherein the ‘answer’ (or as close to ‘the answer’ as one may find, and forever doomed to its ‘uncertainty/certainty’) is naturally, consistently and repeatedly recalculated, ‘rehabilitated’, and reconstituted for a ‘free’ mind.

Bibliography

Chalmers, David. 1996. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fanon, Frantz. 1952. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. by Richard Philcox. 2008. Grove Press. Publishers Grove West. New York, New York.

Hegel, Georg W. F. 1977. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. by F. Miller and J N. Findlay. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hofstadter, Douglas, R. 1999. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Basic Books, anniversary edition. DATES ARE FUCKED

Jung, Carl. 1959. Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Trans. by R.F.C. Hull. Second Edition, 1978. Bollingen Series XX. Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ, USA.

Plato. 1971. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters. Trans. by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University Press.

Footnotes:

[1] Fanon pp. 185-197.

[2] ‘Modern’ as in ‘contemporarily shifting’; phenomenally complacent, yet ontologically unstable.

[3] Jung 1959 pp. 18-22; 246-248. *Note that italics often denote a greater degree of complexity, ‘quotes’ one of a lesser degree and potentially colloquial. Also note that syzygies separated by a /slash represent complexly equal concepts (i.e. the order doesn’t matter), and such separated by -dashes represent less complex ontologies dependent on Absolute/relative factors (i.e. the first listed is the contextual aspect). No grammatical abnormality recalls colloquial context.

[4] As logic (drawn reason) has outpaced dialectics (the ‘back and forth’ necessary for conceptual evolution) over the past century, concepts have become increasingly ‘axiomatized’, or subject to intense categorical dispute. Placing the concept ‘consciousness’ (or any of its iterations such as unconscious, unconscious, superconsciousness, etc.) in such a situation strips it of its ‘uncertain’ qualities, qualities essential for its understanding in three dimensions, or as something equally uncertain as it is ontologically inevitable (for what would an ontology ‘be’ without consciousness? [Chalmers pp. 94-99]). If dialectics may serve as an alternative to strictly axiomatic logic (from the Aristotelian tradition), syzygies provide a quicker way to bypass this one-dimensional complication. For more on this, see Jung pp. 33, 191 (although the point here admittedly moves a little outside of Jung).

[5] Ibid., pp. 267-268.

[6] Fanon pp. 186.

[7] Another word for this could be ‘post-Hegelian’ dialectics as a split between dialectics and logic, where Hegel’s third dimension to the back-and-forth of ‘conscious’ and ‘non-conscious’ thought is litigated across all conceptual plains, making all concepts both Absolute and relative (fact or non-fact), though either logical (instinctual) or dialectical (‘conscious’ or conscious-leaning). I’ll get briefly into this in a few paragraphs, but the details are not essential to the subject(s) at hand.

[8] Ibid., pp. 185.

[9] This may be observed in Jung (The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, section 3), Hegel (The Phenomenology of Spirit, section A), Lao Tzu, and many more; the point is that the exercise takes the more conceptually complex role as against whatever dichotomy it’s preemptively dissociating.

[10] Fanon pp. 186.

[11] Ibid, pp. 192.

[12] This ‘dimensional’ aspect is not strictly spatial/temporal, but it is likely psychologically derivative, at least circa 2022-2024. Materially, ‘dimension’ refers to space Absolutely and to time to the extent that space is observed at a measured moment of time. Intellectually (mindfully in Descartes; psychically in Jung; etc.), such is at least depended equally on both space and time, if not time as a qualitative factor. The intellectual ‘space’ of a ‘dimension’, in this sense, would be subservient to the temporal dissemination allowing for the observation, just as material space is subject to the temporal ‘moment’. As three-dimensional ‘thinking’ (derivative of three-dimensional observation and experience) evolves through various iterations of consciousness (unconsciousness, supraconsciousness, ego-consciousness, etc.), these ‘dimensions’ also evolve, both spatially and temporally (Hofstadter 344, 473-475, 581), most easily accessible in the forms of syzygies or ontological quaternities (see Jung pp. 159, 223-232, 242-243). I hope to have a paper on this in the near future.

[13] Hegel pp. 487-490.

[14] ‘Dimensional transcendence’: the singular evolution from one ‘consciousness’ (individual/collective, focused/contextualized) to another more complex. This is admittedly a bit abstract; once again, I hope to have an essay out on this particular concept sometime in the near future.

[15] Fanon pp.192. Note that this also brings into relevance the conflux of certainty/uncertainty and ‘truth’ on a more ontologically complex plain, but such is for another time.

[16] Hofstadter pp. 52. To briefly extend this, such a confusion between intellectual and primordial (material, with an ontological component) ‘survival’ raises the prospect of the temporal unification of phenomenology and ontology via. contemporary computer technology as a type of ‘conscious’ transistor between two and three dimensions. This is very preliminary in the present context, but such would constitute a foundational concept in what I’ve been calling ‘onto-phenomenology’: the bridge between ‘being’ and ‘experience’ (as perceived/perspectivized, not merely observed or experienced) is blurred via interaction with two-dimensional space/time (i.e. the internet or associated technologies), and so all concepts and/or conceptual relations or ontologies are temporarily made more ‘complex’ for apperception in three or post-three dimensions.

[17] This is a point referential in modern biology (Darwin), and has premonitions in Nietzsche, Kant (on the intellectual side) and Marx (concerning primordial metaphysics): the concepts ‘survival’ and ‘consciousness’, and particularly in relation to one another (consciousness/survival), may be more nuanced than previously scientifically assumed.

[18] Fanon pp. 191.

[19] I’m using ‘subconscious’ here as something of a bridge between the ‘conscious’ and the unconscious: specific dialectical ‘proofs’ such as Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit or Chapter 7 of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks attempt to display the dialectical process of any particular thought or thought-process. However, because such is dependent as much on ‘uncertain’ as ‘certain’ factors (whereas logic can only abide by Absolute certainty), such is always open to further discourse. Attempts to axiomatize this process (or round out any conceptual barriers), I’ve been calling ‘ontological proofs’ and is a bit beyond the present essay.

[20] See Plato’s Republic (502d-521c) or Parmenides (the whole thing).

[21] Hegel pp. 124-127.

[22] Hegel pp. 300-307.

[23] Fanon pp. 193.

[24] This is an allusion to the ‘moral/ethical’ syzygy as foundational to the three-dimensional outline, and hints as a potential reasons for so much angst and confusion circa the World post-computer technology: the colloquial combination of morals (economic-subjective) as ethics (pseudo-objective) no longer stands for any judgmental category, be it aesthetics, political, or otherwise.

[25] To differentiate from the economic-leaning ‘product’ (material resource; primordial axiom) and the potentially ontological ‘creation’, an ‘artistic prospect’ would be the phenomenal (dimensionally focal, or ‘center’) result of any conscious-unconscious (honest) process.