English 375

Isaac Julien’s film, Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Masks, examines some of the larger issues of race, nationalism, and colonialism we have been exploring so far this semester. Below are some ideas to consider as you frame your response to the film in the form of a blog post:

-In the film, Stuart Hall discusses the importance of the gaze for Fanon’s understanding of a fragmented colonized-self and racialized identities. How does this intersect with other texts we have read thus far this semester.

-Hall also suggested that Fanon’s writing must be understood in relationship to the myriad questions and challenges facing the colonized people of the world at the historical moment of decolonization during the mid and latter-twentieth century. How does this film frame some of those questions and challenges that Fanon writes about in “On National Culture”? Can you trace any of the issues we have discussed, for example the dependency complex of the colonized subject, in other texts we have read this semester?

-How did you interpret the numerous scenes of psychotherapy for both the colonized and the colonizing subject?

-Why did Fanon identify with the Arab independence movement in Algiers?

-How do you understand Stuart Hall’s potentially subversive reading of the veiled muslim woman - a figure deeply linked to ideas of oppression and repression in the Western imagination?

-How do you understand Fanon’s defense of the conservative Islamic practices in Algeria?