Alienation, Anomie, and the "Gaze"

One theme which I found to be particularly interesting that was brought up in the readings this week was that of the experience of anomie/alienation for blacks living within a multitude of nations across the globe. This experience is a direct result of racism, a social fact which permeates all societies because of the shared history of colonization. Alienation is an experience referring to the physical and/or psychological distancing/isolation of the self from others. Similarly, anomie occurs when normative social order and moral guidance is broken down into a structural crisis leaving the individual feeling a sense of vertigo, confusion, and a loss of meaning or purpose in life. Ironically, Fanon points out, it is this same feeling that whites are trying to escape when they push and project it onto blacks and other people of color. “The presence of the Negroes beside the whites is in a way an insurance policy on humanness. When the whites feel that they have become too mechanized, they turn to the men of color and ask them for a little human sustenance.” When the capitalist system of labor begins to alienate whites from their products of labor, themselves, and their fellow man (Marx’s theory of alienation), they then turn around and use the power of their “gaze” to project that same feeling of anomie onto other races. For Fanon, this objectifying “gaze” of the whites transcends the subjectivity (“pour soi”) of blacks and forces them into a position of facticity (“en soi”).  Thus, as Du Bois pointed out, blacks are left strangely aware of a certain double consciousness. Fanon expounds upon this idea exclaiming, “I wanted to be typically Negro—it was no longer possible. I wanted to be white—that was a joke.” So what does this mean? Senghor believed that the only option left for the black man was that of negritude. He admitted that there were certain physical facts of race that could not be denied, but a battle could still be made on the grounds of culture to fight for the restoration of the black man. Unlike biological or physiological miscegenation which is non-voluntary and occurs spontaneously, cultural miscegenation, he says, is always voluntary, and we remain free to appropriate cultural values. Thus, blacks have a duty to fight for their own cultural identity, and negritude should exist in positive relation to the degree of alienation that blacks experience within society. Blacks have to create a racial identity for themselves through culture in order to have a position from which to fight their oppressors. But, as Fanon points, creating an identity based on the challenging predetermined assumptions of whites is counterproductive and unintentionally reifying. It creates a system which mirrors Hegel’s dialectic. Negritude, Fanon notes, mirrors “the theoretical and practical assertion of the supremacy of the white man is its thesis; the position of negritude as an antithetical value is the moment of negativity. But this negative moment is insufficient by itself…they know that it is intended to prepare the synthesis or realization of the human in a society without races. Thus negritude is the root of its own destruction, it is a transition and not a conclusion…” So, I ask, what do you do when stuck within a dialectic cycle? If the entire system is broken would everyone be left feelings a sense of anomie, depression, and desire? Or would we be able to move forward with a sense of positivity and hope for the future? Something new can only be created once the existing relationship is broken down. But, where do you start?

Before you ponder that extremely complex problem, here is a brief comic clip which reminded me of Fanon’s illustration of “the gaze” courtesy of Dave Chappelle.