Constructing "Tyrone":
On the opening pages of the essays he collected under the titled Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Frantz Fanon—a revolutionary voice if ever there were one—noted he would demonstrate that “what is often called the black soul is a white man’s artifact.”
As with all of Fanon’s work, these essays dealt with the “hellish cycle” of that kind of “blackness” which acquires it meaning (or which is constructed, to use the more hip terminology) only within the white-European colonies of the Third World—and, more importantly, within the larger, much wealthier and more powerful metropolitan centers back home. Which also happen to be where most of the lawmakers, the writers and artists, the historians and cartographers, live and ply their crafts.
In "The Fact of Blackness," the celebrated fifth chapter of this collection, Fanon recites philosophical, anthropological, and literary works to depict the “crushing objecthood” of subjugated people everywhere. But of black people in particular. (He happened to be writing about his experiences in French Martinique and French Algeria. But unquestionably the lessons generalize to whichever regions of the planet the human species has spread.)
Fanon may just as rightly have called the "The Fact of Blackness" the problem of “blackness” (i.e., within quotation marks, to denote its artifactuality, its constructedness). For it is Fanon’s argument that, given the global scale of the white-European colonial project, and the ubiquity of the racism that marches in lockstep with it, we cannot understand the simple “being of a black man.”
The reason? Because, as Fanon put it, “not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man.”
To help explain the problem of “blackness,” Fanon uses Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay on anti-Semitism. Here are some of Sartre’s words that Fanon uses: “[P]oisoned by the stereotype that others have of them,…they live in fear that their acts will correspond to this stereotype….[T]heir conduct is perpetually overdetermined from the inside.”
Notice, however, that in Fanon’s hands, this formula is rewritten. To explain the problem of “blackness,” he accepts the first-half, not the second.
Poisoned by the stereotype that others have of them. But perpetually overdetermined from without.
Not from the inside, that is. But from the outside-in.
“[T]he slave not of the ‘idea’ that others have of me but of my own appearance.”
“And so it is not I who make a meaning for myself, but it is the meaning that was already there, pre-existing, waiting for me.”
“The Negro is a toy in the white man’s hands….”
I’ve taken up Fanon’s next-to-impossible-to-paraphrase writings here for one reason, and one reason only: Upon reading a little review in the Chicago Sun-Times's books section of Natalie Hopkinson and Natalie Moore’s recently published Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation, I was immediately reminded of another "Tyrone" (quotation marks and all, as one must slip on a pair of Playtex gloves before touching "him").
A "Tyrone" that very well may never have been deconstructed. (Who'd bother?) But certainly a "Tyrone" that has been constructed. As in fabricated. As in cut from the whole cloth. Right down to “his” bogus black masculinity. ("Hey Peterson and Miner, FUCK YOU also. Both of you are a bunch of worthless sacks of shit. Enjoy raping Joe Egan you psychotic bastards....”) And “his” phony Hip-Hop whatever-the-hell it's supposed to be.
As Monifa Thomas explained in her review of the book about the deconstructed Tyrone ("Sisters on brothers," November 12), “Tyrone isn't so much an actual person as a product of the mass media—the black man as defined by images on BET, SportsCenter and the evening news.”
Indeed. It was while thinking about the “Tyrone” in the title of Hopkinson and Moore’s Deconstructing Tyrone that I also thought of the other, bogus "Tyrone." On top of which the problem of “blackness” in Fanon’s also became immediately apparent.
To repeat the Fanon: “The Negro is a toy in the white man’s hands….”
White skin. Black mask.
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
"Tyrone Briggs"
Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation, Natalie Y. Moore and Natalie Hopkinson (Cleis Press, 2006)
"The Hip-Hop Generation, Raising Up Its Sons," Natalie Hopkinson, Washington Post, October 18, 2006
"Sisters on brothers: Female authors examine black masculinity from different perspectives," Monifa Thomas, Chicago Sun-Times, November 12, 2006
"The Fact of Blackness," Frantz Fanon, 1952 (as posted to the Chicken Bones website)
Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon, Trans. Charles Lam Markmann (Grove Press, 1969)
Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiolgy of Hate, Jean-Paul Sartre, Trans. George J. Becker (Random House, 1995)
"Hate Speech and the Internet," ZNet, August 19, 2006
On the opening pages of the essays he collected under the titled Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Frantz Fanon—a revolutionary voice if ever there were one—noted he would demonstrate that “what is often called the black soul is a white man’s artifact.”
As with all of Fanon’s work, these essays dealt with the “hellish cycle” of that kind of “blackness” which acquires it meaning (or which is constructed, to use the more hip terminology) only within the white-European colonies of the Third World—and, more importantly, within the larger, much wealthier and more powerful metropolitan centers back home. Which also happen to be where most of the lawmakers, the writers and artists, the historians and cartographers, live and ply their crafts.
In "The Fact of Blackness," the celebrated fifth chapter of this collection, Fanon recites philosophical, anthropological, and literary works to depict the “crushing objecthood” of subjugated people everywhere. But of black people in particular. (He happened to be writing about his experiences in French Martinique and French Algeria. But unquestionably the lessons generalize to whichever regions of the planet the human species has spread.)
Fanon may just as rightly have called the "The Fact of Blackness" the problem of “blackness” (i.e., within quotation marks, to denote its artifactuality, its constructedness). For it is Fanon’s argument that, given the global scale of the white-European colonial project, and the ubiquity of the racism that marches in lockstep with it, we cannot understand the simple “being of a black man.”
The reason? Because, as Fanon put it, “not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man.”
To help explain the problem of “blackness,” Fanon uses Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay on anti-Semitism. Here are some of Sartre’s words that Fanon uses: “[P]oisoned by the stereotype that others have of them,…they live in fear that their acts will correspond to this stereotype….[T]heir conduct is perpetually overdetermined from the inside.”
Notice, however, that in Fanon’s hands, this formula is rewritten. To explain the problem of “blackness,” he accepts the first-half, not the second.
Poisoned by the stereotype that others have of them. But perpetually overdetermined from without.
Not from the inside, that is. But from the outside-in.
“[T]he slave not of the ‘idea’ that others have of me but of my own appearance.”
“And so it is not I who make a meaning for myself, but it is the meaning that was already there, pre-existing, waiting for me.”
“The Negro is a toy in the white man’s hands….”
I’ve taken up Fanon’s next-to-impossible-to-paraphrase writings here for one reason, and one reason only: Upon reading a little review in the Chicago Sun-Times's books section of Natalie Hopkinson and Natalie Moore’s recently published Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation, I was immediately reminded of another "Tyrone" (quotation marks and all, as one must slip on a pair of Playtex gloves before touching "him").
A "Tyrone" that very well may never have been deconstructed. (Who'd bother?) But certainly a "Tyrone" that has been constructed. As in fabricated. As in cut from the whole cloth. Right down to “his” bogus black masculinity. ("Hey Peterson and Miner, FUCK YOU also. Both of you are a bunch of worthless sacks of shit. Enjoy raping Joe Egan you psychotic bastards....”) And “his” phony Hip-Hop whatever-the-hell it's supposed to be.
As Monifa Thomas explained in her review of the book about the deconstructed Tyrone ("Sisters on brothers," November 12), “Tyrone isn't so much an actual person as a product of the mass media—the black man as defined by images on BET, SportsCenter and the evening news.”
Indeed. It was while thinking about the “Tyrone” in the title of Hopkinson and Moore’s Deconstructing Tyrone that I also thought of the other, bogus "Tyrone." On top of which the problem of “blackness” in Fanon’s also became immediately apparent.
To repeat the Fanon: “The Negro is a toy in the white man’s hands….”
White skin. Black mask.
David Peterson
Chicago, USA
"Tyrone Briggs"
Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation, Natalie Y. Moore and Natalie Hopkinson (Cleis Press, 2006)
"The Hip-Hop Generation, Raising Up Its Sons," Natalie Hopkinson, Washington Post, October 18, 2006
"Sisters on brothers: Female authors examine black masculinity from different perspectives," Monifa Thomas, Chicago Sun-Times, November 12, 2006
"The Fact of Blackness," Frantz Fanon, 1952 (as posted to the Chicken Bones website)
Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon, Trans. Charles Lam Markmann (Grove Press, 1969)
Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiolgy of Hate, Jean-Paul Sartre, Trans. George J. Becker (Random House, 1995)
"Hate Speech and the Internet," ZNet, August 19, 2006
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