Black Skin White Masks Ch1. Fanon and his Theory of language

Fanon and his Theory of language
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Frantz Fanon was a respected psychiatrist and political philosopher of French and West Indian descent. His work was influential, and it revolved around post-colonial studies and critical theory. He was inspired by the national liberation movement and joined the Algerian National Liberation Front that fought for the independence of Algeria from France. His main field, however, was psychology as he developed a community psychology model where he insisted on the need for mental health patients to be integrated with family and community instead of getting institutionalized treatment. He was also among the founders of institutional psychotherapy, which was meant to improve mental health treatment and insane asylums. Fanon discussed a lot of issues including politics, colorism, colonization, racism and language. CITATION Sta19 \l 1033 (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2019) This essay is geared towards deconstructing his theory on language, an in-depth understanding of all the problems he faced and a personal understanding of the theory.
Fanon’s work has been subject to many interpretations over the years and is being applied in social, political, cultural and educational fields in the modern world. Language is the primary method humans use for communication and interactions. Language does not have to be verbal as it can be used in other unspoken forms such as writing and sign language. Trying to learn a new language can be challenging as they all have grammar rules, different ways of pronunciation and an endless list of vocabulary. CITATION Kha20 \l 1033 (Khan Academy, 2020) It is fascinating how individuals get to learn a language especially children who don’t receive any formal education by the time they start speaking. A child can grasp some aspects of a language and begin to follow certain grammatical rules in the process. This shows that humans are gifted and have an impressive level of information processing capabilities.
Fanon’s personal experiences as a black man in a time of mass colonialism enabled him to view language from a colonizer/colonized relationship. He experienced some racism, which he used to develop theories on culture. Language to him means to assume a culture and beliefs of that particular language speaker. That’s why being colonized has a huge effect on one’s consciousness. The colonized states were colonized by the language which means they support the same language and French consciousness that looks down on blackness considering it a sin and evil. To escape the racism and black identity, the men wear a white mask and are forced to fight for resources being denied on the basis of their appearance. Fanon acknowledges that the need to be accepted in society creates a disjuncture between a black man’s body and his mind.
He views that ‘white’ gains stability by the negation of ‘black’ therefore, none can exist without the other. CITATION Fan20 \l 1033 (Fanon, Frantz, 2020) This can be referred to as orientalism which is a way that cultural differences are pointed out and exaggerated to make one culture look superior to the other. Algeria was a colony of France...