Fanon and the Crisis of European Man

Katie O’Donnell
PHIL 352 22 October 2008
Philosophical Report II
Gordon, Lewis R. Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the
Human Sciences. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Frantz Fanon, a younger contemporary of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, was not, strictly speaking, a phenomenologist. He was a philosopher and a psychiatrist, an ardent supporter and participant in the struggle for Algerian independence, and a passionate and controversial critic of the degradation of humanity caused by colonialism. And, being born on the French-colonized island of Martinique, he shared not only an era but, in name at least, a nationality with the aforementioned philosophers, though the racial designator “black” qualified Fanon’s status/existence as a Frenchman. In his essay Fanon and the Crisis of European Man Lewis Gordon engages Fanon and postcolonial discourse to examine what it means to be black in a world that remains constructed on and with the logic of European/white superiority. Gordon uses Fanon’s work to advance postcolonial studies into the realm of postcolonial existential-phenomenology, contending primarily with Husserl and Sartre and arguing convincingly for the necessity of a phenomenological account of colonialism.
Gordon begins his essay with a short section entitled “Fanon as Critique of European Man,” designed to present Fanon’s humanism in a phenomenological light and provide introduction to the crisis of European Man. Gordon writes that “…France is not Fanon’s Other; he is France’s Other. Like the African American, Fanon finds himself inextricably linked to a society that not only rejects him, but also attempts to deny his existence as a legitimate point of view…” (6). The colonial attitude that Fanon fights against is one that equates European Culture with culture in general and the White Man with humanity in general. The particular is universalized, structuring reality in such a way as to deny the humanity of each individual who does not fit the description required, rendering these individuals essentially invisible within a structure of antiblack racism. Both Fanon and Gordon assert that to reduce humanity in this fashion is to kill it. While this claim finds a considerable amount of support around the world, Gordon argues that we still live within the structure of antiblack racism; it is bad faith institutionalized, and engenders the crisis of European man. Gordon writes: “…the white man looks at the black man and wonders when it will all end, but the white man knows deep down that a just future is one in which he himself no longer exists in virtue of his ceasing to function as the End, or less ambiguously, the telos of Man” (12). Both concepts, “black man” and “white man”, are co-constructed, and the complete eradication of one implies the complete eradication of the other. Gordon argues that European man continues to act out of bad faith as he flees from true responsibility and choice into the arms of the nostalgic pseudo-responsibility invoked by the “white man’s burden.”
Gordon goes on to argue that the two terms comprising “postcolonial phenomenology” are, in a sense, equivalent to one another as each demands a radically critical stance be taken toward colonizing influences. Husserl famously asserted the phenomenological attitude’s need to bracket the natural attitude in order to reflect upon it and its intentionalities. Gordon argues that a similar ontological suspension is required when dealing with the logic of colonization. He writes, “Fanon rejects traditional ontological dimensions of human beings in favor of existential ones” (10). This is because his description as a “black man” within his society did not resonate with who Fanon was, with his ontological status; rather, it involved who he was interpreted to be. Gordon, in his effort to critique ontology, introduces Sartre who then is used to discuss different modes of human embodiment. Three, specifically: the human being as “the perspective from a standpoint in the world; the perspective seen from other standpoints in the world; and the…perspective that is aware of itself being seen from other standpoints in the world” (19). There is, then, a social dimension necessary to embodiment, which Gordon argues is essential to the “recognition of human being” (21) and conversely allows for the study of institutional bad faith. Evasion of responsibility is not just an individual refusal to choose; analyzing the phenomenon of racism shows it to be a social refusal. The refusal to choose that characterizes the crisis of European Man results not only in a distortion of historical understanding, but the denial of History (as in the history of humanity) to those men and women whose humanity is rendered invisible. Yet, Gordon writes, “Every black person faces history—his or her story—every day as a situation, as a choice, of how to stand in relation to oppression, of whether to live as a being subsumed by oppression or to live as active resistance towards liberation, or to live as mere indifference. This conception of history is rooted in daily life” (29). The recognition of one’s everyday oppression, of the structural manner of their oppression Liberation from oppression has its source in the everyday existences of the oppressed. Gordon defines oppression in this context as extraordinary conditions of everyday life being placed on individuals in such a way as to make them appear ordinary, even natural.
Gordon argues that, “…we find the uniqueness of our circumstances subject to a peculiar sense of anonymity—it takes on a form that may not be uniquely our own, although there is a very real sense in which it is our own by virtue of the fact that we are the ones who are living it at the time of consideration” (43). Similar considerations prompted WEB Du Bois to ask not what it feels like to be a problem, but what it means to be a problem, as Gordon points out in other works. What modes of existence, what constructed institutions allow for the anonymity of a significant portion of humanity? How is everyday existence informed and itself constructed by the logics of colonialism and racism? Gordon continues: “Racism renders the individual anonymous even to himself. The very standpoint of consciousness, embodiment itself, is saturated with a strangeness that either locks the individual into the mechanism of things or sends him away and transforms him into an observer hovering over that very thing” (58). He makes a distinction between authentic embodiment and alienated embodiment, arguing that, “…to be seen in a racist way is an ironic way of not being seen through being seen.” (58). According to Gordon, racism is not sustained by a dialect between Self and Other, because this relationship demands the status of a relationship between human beings, a status which black people are not afforded within the structure of antiblack racism. So the struggle for liberation under oppression becomes the struggle to be epistemologically acknowledged as Other. Gordon does not conclude his discussion without addressing the most controversial element of Fanon’s own work, namely, his reliance on violence as a component of true liberation. Gordon uses the concept of tragedy to characterize and expand on Fanon’s ideas. Tragedy as conceived by the Greeks involved the powerful taking responsibility for their actions through the recognition of duty. Gordon writes that in a racist society “…the burden of bearing the community’s evils is placed upon the powerless instead of the powerful. In effect, the tragic stage has been turned upside down. Thus, the revolutionary possibility of tragedy is that its object of degradation, if you will, is always the powerful. But the irony of tragedy is that it promises a form of restoration that can never truly be ‘as things were before.’ Tragedy is, fundamentally, in Sartrean language, progressive-regressive” (75). Violence to others or to oneself often plays a central role in tragedy. Nevertheless, the political question that ultimately arises out of Gordon’s examination of racism and the crisis of European Man is how we can conceive and practice a political reality that is not structured on the degradation of humanity. Though the logistics of this structure remain unclear, Gordon does throughout his text lay out three general points/issues that require implementation in the restructuring of everyday life. The first is an articulation of a philosophical anthropology that promotes humanizing sociopolitical change. Secondly, we must realign the concept of human flourishing with an understanding of humanity that takes all human being into account in order to build political institutions that promote humanity. And thirdly the inquiries into humanity and human flourishing must be marked by a radical degree of self-reflection in order to avoid epistemological colonization and the fleeing from responsibility that characterizes bad faith. Overall, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man is a worthwhile, interesting read, and it is certainly both an important and necessary contribution to postcolonial and phenomenological discourses.