Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 21:15:54 -0300
Subject: Re: Fanon's "dual narcissism"


Fanon, who knows that all history is white history, has to simplify, to reduce
diffuse contact-zone experiences to the colonizer/colonized dyad, and to apo-
strophize black and white as a duality, manichaean, absolutely at odds.

Instead of trying to disinter "meaning" from Fanon's necessarily mortiferous
phrasing ("dual narcissism"), it might be more productive to juxtapose what he
says with what Freud says; perhaps its better to avoid using the latter as a
model for meaning... If only to see how they differ (in performatives, register)or to see how Fanon's reading works against the grain of Freud's.

Another strategy might be to consider how Fanon negotiates the conventional
ascription of "narcissism" to Asian/African cultures, which are thought by some
to be arrested in a pre-Oedipus stage. See Spivak's "Echo" for useful insights.

I think Fanon's use has very little to do with Freud's. It is surely the ir-
reducible difference between black self-regard and white self-regard (as impliedby colonial discourse, particularly tht of Mannoni) that he wants to interrogateTrouble is, the rhetoric of his suasion lends itself to being further turned
into hardcore fetishism -- as in JanMohamed's version of manichaeanism -- whose
(sometimes witting) effect is to re-inscribe the authority of the discourse it
claims to be questioning/dismantling.

And this is where we all have to be grateful to Bhabha's "theoretical" work
(never mind how much they pay him): in that it refuses, or slips, the
implications of hegemonic discourse by working to "erase" or shift the ground
of its determinants, at the level of the good ole signifier.

(Note to Baffled of aol.com:- Bhabha probably doesn't know what he's talking
about either, but that's not really the point. Dude's just struggling to shed
the skin of positivist,nomological, hegelian,logocentric, etc, Western discourseWay cool.)
PM./


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