Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 14:06:41 -0500
Subject: Re: Fanon's "dual narcissism"


Hi Deb,

In a message dated 95-10-31 21:31:33 EST, you write:

> I have read Freud's paper
>'On Narcissism: An Introduction' for further clarification, but I am not
>much clearer.  Fanon I think links the idea of "dual narcissism"  to the
>notion of an authentic seal of 'whiteness' for the white man and 'blackness'
>for the black man (man = men in Fanon's work here!).  I take the meaning of
>dual as twofold or double then perhaps what is being suggested is two
>"instincts of self-preservation" (Freud 66) that parallel each other in the
>desire for authenticity of 'whiteness' and 'blackness'.

I have just re-read the Fanon passage and in my mind he suggests the
following.  First, I would not necessarily link his comment to close to
Freud's concept, because Fanon makes it clear that "the black man's
alienation is not an individual question".  And indeed the black man's
blackness is, or at least (historically) was for a long time, constructed as
inferiority.  For Fanon this inferior self-perception is his
psychoexistential Dasein/existence: "For the black man there is only ONE
destiny.  And it is white."  The white man does not suffer from any similar
self-denial.  He is what he is what he is: "The white man SLAVES to reach the
human level."  But, as Hegel pointed out correctly, BOTH the slave and his
master are prisoners who have not yet attained their full humanity.  "I
believe that the individual should tend to take on the universality inherent
in the human condition", Fanon writes, but the hastens to point out what
Nietzsche said, namely, that our personality is being constructed during the
socialization processes of our childhood. "Dual narcissism", then, would
mean, in my view, that, by sticking to the warped concepts of "black" and
"white", both have not yet arrived at their true humanity, which would see
only one race, i.e. the human race.

Let me know what you think.


Holger Henke


     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

     ------------------