Assignment : Depression in African community in Black skin white masks

 

Name :Mehal J.  Pandya 

Sem :3

Roll no. 13

Enrollment no. 2069108420200029

Subject : Post colonial literature 

Assignment : Depression in African Community in Black Skin White Masks 

Batch:2019-2020

E-mail Id :mehalpandya252@gmail.com

    Submitted to: Department of English 

         M. K. Bhavnagar University 

Introduction 

        Since the 1980s  numerous novelist dramatist and poets have been marketed as a postcolonial writers but what is the postcolonial literature in the broadest term the category includes works that have a relationship to the subjugating forces of imperialism and colonial expansion in short postcolonial literature is that which has arise in primary Li since the end of World War II from regions of the world undergoing decolonization Works from such reasons in the 20th and 21st century such as the Indian subcontinent Nigeria South Africa and numerous parts of the Caribbean for example might be described as post colonial  because of the colonized people have some kind of anxiety stress and depression. they want to be as like colonial. so here we will discuss about the depression in African community in a reference with  Black Skin white Masks ,work by  Fanon. 

So let see the  definition of depression and clear it in mind so we can connect it with the  post colonial work. 

     Depression (major depressive disorder) is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Fortunately, it is also treatable. Depression causes feelings of sadness and/or a loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed. It can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems.

Mental health refers to state of our emotion psychological and social well-being it is also dear sweet how we will react other and the decisions we make in our life

Frantz Fanon 

            Frantz Fanon was  writer he also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon. He was French west Indian psychiatric, political philosopher, revolutionary and write from French colony of Martinique. Whose work are influential in the Field of Post colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism. As well as being as Intellectual. 

Some  brief information about the  text by Fanon Black Skin white  Masks 

Black skin white Masks is one of Fanon's important work.In Black Skin white Masks, Fanon psychoanalyzes  the oppressed Black person who is perceived to have to be a lesser creature in the  White world that live in and studies how they navigate the world through a performance of White - ness. Particularly in discussing language, Fanon talks about how the Black persons use of a colonizers language is seen by the colonizer as Predator Re and not transformative which in turn may create in security in the blacks consciousness he recounts that he himself faced many admonitions  as a child for using Creole French. 

Chapter 1: The Black Man and Language 

Chapter 2 : The Women of Colour and The White Man

Chapter 3 : The Man of Colour and The White Man  

Chapter 4 : The So-called Dependency Complex of The 

Colonized          

Chapter 5 : The Fact of Blackness 

Chapter 6 : The Black  Man  and Psychopathology 

Chapter 7 : The  Black Man  and Recognition 

Chapter 8 : By Way of Conclusion 

Here  through the some  chapters from  text we come to  know about  the anxiety, stress and depression in the  African community. 

Chapter 2 :  The Women of Colour and The White Man 

     

   In This Chapter  we can see that black women  want to marry with white man because they want value in society they also want to be recognise not as a black but as a white the effect of white people also touch to the society which we can see here black women also wish to white skin which white woman has how Desire of whiteness is more in the black women.

Ex :  we can take the example of the bluest eyes which is the written by Toni Morrison we find black girl Desire phone the blue eyes of white men and women.

              

Chapter 3 :  The Man of Colour and the White Man 

         Here in this chapter we can see the  paradox of chapter 2  there are women who want to be ameri with white men but in this chapter the man of colour black I want white women because they also influence under the white culture and their rule.

      

    white  represent weld beauty Intelligence and virtue but the black people how kind of thinking that they are inferior than white people.

Chapter 4 :  The So-called Dependency Complex of  The Colonized 

              In this chapter phonons view that people of colour have a deep desire for right white rules that those who opposite to do not have a secure sense of self that they have a cheap on their shoulder.

    

         In this chapter we come to understand that the stereotypes of happy Darkies, Uppity Negroes and white Savior all come from the need of white people to feel that their power in society is good and not resist

  

    In  the  second  chapter  of  Black  Skin,  White  Masks “The  Women  of color  and  the  white  man” The  Women  of color  and  the  white  man”  Frantz  Fanon  makes  some  assertions about  black  Martiniquais  women  that  garnered  him  the  criticism  of  some feminist  theorists  as  a  misogynist,  and  as  promoting  a  perverse  (anti-miscegenational)  form  of  black  nationalism.  Fanon’s  rapport  with  his  subject  is that  of  a  psychiatrist  attempting  to  understand  the  effects  of  colonialism  and racism  on  the  colonized  subject’s  psyche:  that  is,  the  internalization  of  racism and  the  development  of  a  “dependency  complex.”  Among  black  Martiniquais  women,  Fanon  argues,  this  dependency  complex  is  evidenced,  among other  places,  in  their  expressed  xenocentrism  or,  as  the  phenomenon  is  most commonly referred  to  in  Hispanic  America,  malinchismo:  that  is,  a  preference for white sexual partners, and a distaste for black men.

  Now  after  think upon that bee have  some questions like; 

   Why they want white skin ?

    What they really want ?

    So we can say that they didn't live the  white person. Why they loved them that is also another question. Because they  didn't treat them well and always abuse them and called Negros. So the people with Black skin they want the  status, power and superiority in the white world. So this is the  show the  mental  situation of the  Black people and they want freedom to do what they really want. 

 Much of the  work  on  Black  people  in  psychology during  the  18th  and  19th centuries  was  conducted  by European  theorists  who  engaged  in  race  comparative studies,  often  referred  to  as  anthropometry  (Guthrie,  2004a). Anthropometry  is  a  term used  to  describe  a  classification system  that  was  based  on  the  categorization  of  certain physical  attributes  held  by a  particular  group  or  groups  of  people  like;  skin  color,  hair texture,  brain skull  capacity, lip  size, .  The  term  represented  an  early  attempt  by Western society to  develop  models  for  differentiating  between  African  descendants  and Whites   The  practice  of  anthropometry also  influenced  later  attempts by European  psychologists  to  expand  physical  differences  to  support  findings that purported  the  mental  capacity and  personality  of  African  descendants  to  be  inferior. 

   They people think that they are inferior because of that they have Black Skins. But when we  apply some  logic then we come to know that it is natural things to have that kind of skin. It is also depends on the place where you live. In particular time, people have some  particular mind set which is changed in the  present time. Now they know skin colour does not matter for to get superiority and power. 

There  are  many research  scholar who survey and research on the psychology of the  African people. 

Moving  beyond  genetic  theories  of  superiority and  inferiority,  the  course  of psychological  research  towards  the  mid-to-late  20th  century,  focused  more  so  on  the social  standing  of  African  descendants.  In  fact,  Baratz  (1966)  proposed  that  following the  1954  Supreme  Court  decision  that  disbanded  the  segregation of  public  schools,  the theories  of  genetic  inferiority which  had  promulgated  throughout  the  18th  and  19th century was  being  replaced  with  theories  of  social  pathology.  Modern perceptions  of African  descendants  in  Western society characterized  the  group  as  unstable, uneducated  and  disorganized. A  brief  academic  search  of  Black  people  and  psychology during  the  1960s  frequently  referenced  the  findings presented  in  the  Moynihan  Report (1965). It  is  in  this  report  that  Senator  Daniel  Patrick  Moynihan  discusses  the  social standing  of  African  descendants, more  specifically  the  “Negro  family”  as characteristically pathological

Conclusion 

We come  to know that  which kind of little to  big things  can give depression, anxiety, stress to person.Human always in quest of something and never live in happy way . Human will never satisfied with things and it will harm them. 

  

      Mannoni and Adler say, according to Fanon, is that a Black person’s feeling of inferiority or any related neurosis is an individual problem that can be corrected by adjusting an individual’s expectations or desires. Fanon disagrees and says that we must adjust the social situation that creates these desires and the impossibility of realizing them.

   “   we must change the world rather than the individual.”

   -   Fanon

Work citation 

Baldwin, Joseph A. “African Self-Consciousness and the Mental Health of African-Americans.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 15, no. 2, 1984, pp. 177–194. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2784007. Accessed 2 Dec. 2020.

Bergner, Gwen. “Who Is That Masked Woman? Or, the Role of Gender in Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks.” PMLA, vol. 110, no. 1, 1995, pp. 75–88. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/463196. Accessed 2 Dec. 2020.

Fanon, Frantz, and Charles L. Markmann. Black Skin, White Masks. , 1967. Print.

Phoenix, Aisha. “Colourism and the Politics of Beauty.” Feminist Review, no. 108, 2014, pp. 97–105. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24571924. Accessed 2 Dec. 2020.