Fanon and the Internalization Process

In the opinion of Fanon: ‘not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man’ (Fanon, 1967, p.110). He reiterates Dubois’s notion of the double consciousness: ‘If there is an inferiority complex, it is the outcome of a double process’ (ibid, p.11). Fanon’s seminal works, Black Skin, White Mask (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), examine the psychology of the colonized and the means of empowerment necessary for their liberation that opened the discussion of the American civil right movement. He highlights the internalization process or, as he refers to it, the ‘epidermalization’ of the inferiority complex. He says ‘in the collective unconscious, black = ugliness, sin, darkness, mortality’ (Fanon, 1967, p.192) and draws attention to black people’s battle of self-hatred, ‘a Negro is forever in combat with his own image’ (ibid, p.194) and refers to his own personal experience: ‘it was impossible for me to get away from an inborn complex to assert myself as a BLACK MAN… I am fixed’ (Fanon, 2000, p.329). Fanon speaks of the psychological damage

of black people who have internalized self-loathing, which is experienced as presented as omniscient and unchanging, thus denying or creating conflict with any form of self-love and self-value.

Fanon speaks of his own challenges to overcome the incongruities that lay within himself; on the one hand he feels a sense of self that is expansive and empowered, and on the other hand he is aware of the internalisation of external discourses which are dismissive and degrading, based on the colour of his skin:

Nevertheless with all my strength I refuse to accept that amputation. I feel in myself a soul as immense as the world, truly a soul as deep as the deepest of rivers, my chest has the power to expand without limit. I am the master and I am advised to adopt the humility of the cripple (ibid, p.334).

Fanon (although the term was not used in the sixties) applied a psycho-social

approach to understanding his personal experience of racism as well as the experience of other black people: ‘the analysis that I am undertaking is psychological’, although acknowledging ‘it is apparent to me that the effective disalienation of the black man entails an immediate recognition of social and economic realities’ (Fanon, 1967, p.11). He looks at the effects of racism by examining the individual’s dialogical relationship between their inner and outer worlds, bringing together psychological and social discourses. He suggests that the external racial discourses are internalised and become ‘implicit knowledge’; these discourses become the norm and inseparable to a person’s sense of self:

A slow composition of my self as a body in the middle of a spatial and temporal world – such seems to be the schema. It does not impose itself on me; it is rather, a definitive structuring of the self and of the world – definitive because it creates a real dialectic between my body and the world (Fanon, 2000, p.327).

Fanon was radical in his thinking in the fifties and sixties as he brought into the debate of race the essential component of the body. The traditional conception of identity politics arose within social movements, ‘in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, in the wake of the de-colonization and nationalistic struggles’ (Hall, 2000a, p.204), and thus the focus of identity politics lent towards a social constructionist perspective of understanding the impact between socio-political constructs and collective identities. Stuart Hall in a post–colonial context echoes Dubois’s double consciousness: ‘the self as it is inscribed in the gaze of the Other’ (Hall, 2000a, p.202), and says the structure of identification is ‘always constructed through splitting. Splitting between that which one is, and that which is the other’ (ibid). Hall says that it was only ‘in more recent times a psychological discourse of the self … a notion of the continuous, self-sufficient, developmental, unfolding, inner, dialectic of selfhood. We are never quite there, but always on our way to it, and when we get there, we will at last know exactly who it is we are’ (ibid, p.200). My concern with this statement of Hall’s is that, although acknowledging the internalisation and fluid nature of identity, there is an underlying residue of an essentialist self which we as individuals are trying to attain; rather than a recognition of a multifaceted self that currently exists. Hall however does reiterate Fanon’s idea that: ‘Identity is not

something which is formed outside and then we tell stories about it. It is that which is narrated in one’s own self’ (ibid, p.202), and it is this notion, Hall argues, that:

breaks down the boundaries, between outside and inside, between those who belong and those who do not, between those whose histories have been written and those whose histories they have depended on but whose histories cannot be spoken’ (ibid).

Dubois’s concept of double consciousness is helpful in my research because it recognises the power of external discourses being internalised and also the conflict between ‘opposing’ identities. This very much speaks to the experience of the

participants in my workshops. In fact the participants represent a generation that Hall refers to as embodying a triple consciousness:

Third generation young Black men and women know they come from the Caribbean, know that they are Black, know they are British. They want to speak from all three identities. They are not prepared to give up any one of them (ibid, p.207).

My workshops revealed the participants’ ongoing challenge between conforming to fixed narratives authorised by family and society and embracing other identities and senses of self emerging in their writing: ‘the small voices, the quiet never-said-this- out-loud-before-voices’ (Walker, 1995, p.xxxvi). Hall wrote about the struggle of identification and recognition.

If people from ethnic minorities are to become not only citizens with equal rights but also an integral part of the national culture, then the meanings of the term 'British' will have to become more inclusive of their experiences, values and aspirations. Otherwise Britain will be a multi-ethnic, mono-cultural society, which is a contradiction in terms. The binding function of national identity only works if individuals can somehow see themselves reflected in the culture (Hall, 2000b, online)

Fanon and Hall refer to a self that is not purely constructed and the idea that the body plays a significant role in the formation of how we see ourselves. This reflects the experience of the participants, although I am more concerned in my research with the role of the felt body than the constructed body (see 1.5). By bringing theories into relation with practice in the hair salon/barbershop, I am offering a new way to discuss identity politics and CWPD.