Abstract

Frantz Fanon first came to the attention of the American readership in the 1960s. The Wretched of the Earth became popular among left radicals. Others subsequently read the book to understand that appeal. As Fanon's work emerged for us, we came to know him as an astute participant/observer of "third world revolution." Much of the writing has been collected in the two books, Toward the African Revolution and A Dying Colonialism. There also followed in the wake of the success of The Wretched the translation from the French of Fanon's first book, Black Skin, White Masks. The last mentioned is unique in the corpus. It is microtheoretical rather than macrotheoretical; its subject is cultural assimilation as opposed to objective observations about the dynamics of post-colonial national liberation; and the author lived to repudiate this early work's advocacy of assimilation as an option for social uplift. Today there is growing Fanon scholarship, but the commentary is skewed in the direction of the later, sociopolitical writings. ;The present dissertation calls for a reappraisal of the early book for contemporary understanding of assimilation as a persisting strand of experience among people of color in cosmopolitan, but dominantly "white" settings. There exists the easy assumption that assimilation is tantamount to inauthenticity. I oppose that understanding. I also decline the school of thought which reads Black Skin, White Masks as a repudiation of cultural assimilation. By "white masks" Fanon refers to a good deal more than simple, social imitation. New commentarial give and take will show that in this book, and precisely as one taken up with assimilation, Fanon takes on the task of naming and sorting out pernicious distortions of behavior that constitute specifiable pitfalls of assimilation and that thereby complicate assimilation as a general avenue of social uplift for colored people in cosmopolitan settings. The book is not a portrait of "servile assimilationist mentality"; it is rather a rich, intricate attempt to disentangle and re-present assimilation as a morally sound alternative