The Concept of the Black Subject in Fanon

Introduction

Fanon is, and has always been, the figure of the Black subject. It then follows that he is still struggling against subjection, which questions the humanity of Black subjects. Subjection still continues to haunt Black subjects, and there has never been a radical break from its clutches, which change to suit the contemporary conditions. For instance, during the era of colonialism, Black subjects were open to subjection in its raw and explicit form, but now, it has hidden itself in the everyday life, and its structural constitution is hard to explain in the realm of common sense, created by the very same subjection. Fanon’s relevance is to expose the scandal of subjection to explicate the fact that the old is the new, the new is the old. It is in Fanon’s articulation of the Black subject that the question of being human or not takes precedence.

The existential condition of the Black subject within the clutches of the anti-Black world has been of concern to Fanon and continues to be of concern in the contemporary era, which is regarded as something that has nothing to do with the mechanics of subjection such as colonialism, slavery, and apartheid, which overtly brought the humanity of the Black subject into question. The contemporary era is haunted by Fanon, in that the Black subject continues to be in the existential predicament of not having the will to live but to survive. That is, those who are at the receiving end of subjection survive in that their existence is exposed to life and death in an arbitrary fashion in which the norm of ethics is rendered collapsible. To survive clearly means that the humanity of the Black subject is brought into question, and it is through Fanonian intervention that it is essential to engage the concept of the Black subject from the ontological zero point. That is to say, the Black subject should be understood from lived experience and the form of a living being that is rendered non-existent but being the one that possesses the possibility to emerge. It is the form of life that seeks to break away from survival and to move toward the existential condition of having the will to live. The will to live is to live according to the existential determinants of the Black subject, and the conditions of life set by itself and for itself. It is to move from what Fanon refers to as the condition of the Black subject being determined without.

The White Liberal Façade

Freedom, justice, and equality occupy the liberal norms and way of political life, and are referred to here as the White liberal façade if extended to Blackness. This is a façade being conferred by White subjects in their capacity qua masters where the Black subject is told that there is no difference, whereas there is (Fanon, 1952/2008). Fanon’s condemnation of them renders them scandalous on the basis of being determined outside the existential condition of the Black subject. As such, the meaning and application of freedom, justice, and equality uphold White liberal sensitivities while relegating the Black subject to the outside. This is because the struggle of the Black subject is that of ontological demands, which present a scandal considering the liberal treaties (Wilderson, 2010). Freedom, justice, and equality cannot be understood outside the idea of race, where White supremacy is structurally positioned to propagate White sensitivity and to pontificate White norms. In this scandalous arrangement, only White sensitivities matter and should be defended at all times. It is clear that race as the organizing principle and racism as the operating logic are essentially only when White matters, and that is why freedom, justice, and equality are emphasized.

It is therefore imperative that the White liberal façade should be understood in the light of its very propagation of its prudent values of freedom, justice, and equality. Freedom, justice, and equality are predicated on the politics of exclusion, and they do not in their articulation address the question of race, which presents a scandal. No wonder that they emphasize their application to “everyone” or the “whole human fraternity” in their articulation and presentation. The idea of race and its operating logic, racism, are not examined as problems, which are the very antithesis of what is being advocated. “A given society is racist or it is not” (Fanon, 1952/2008, p. 63). Fanon finds himself in a racist society, which militates against the Black subject. What is being hidden by freedom, justice, and equality is how they apply only to Whiteness as a category of being, and being propagated as mere extensions to Black subjects, who are nevertheless excluded. Freedom, justice, and equality are informed by the racist ontology, which is masked by the liberal façade appearing to hold the high moral ground and be immune from criticism. The rhetoric is used to mask reality, and Fanon’s condemnation of freedom, justice, and equality as things White clearly means that the Black subject who upholds such values is, in fact, a token propagating what does not apply to itself. The Black subject is outside the register of freedom, justice, and equality and to think of being in such a register is to wallow in the White liberal façade.

Accordingly, for the Black subject to feature in the White liberal register it should act White in order not to be absent since politics are fashioned in such a way that White liberal sensibilities are guarded and advanced. This also means claiming inclusion in the register that excludes. In no way are White liberal sensibilities attuned and attended to in the ontological demands of the Black subject. For the position of the Black subject is what they want to be and that, of course, is having to fashion politics attuned and attentive to their own ontological demands. For Fanon, what freedom, justice, and equality mean is the manipulation of the Black subject as it is real for the White subject and a mirage for the Black subject. Therefore, the political register of the Black subject should not be located within the White liberal register but in a register of its own. For the mere fact that the Black subject is absent from the political register of White liberal sensibilities, it is absurd for the Black subject to expect to have its ontological demands met by Whiteness and its liberal ethos.

When the Black subject tries to access the political register of White liberal ethos, the discourse encounters irrelevance, and even if the Black subject denies such a reality and convinces itself otherwise, the material reality of Blackness and its constitutive demands suggest the opposite. The demands of the Black subject are insatiable demands in that they do not require the world to change, but for it to come to an end as it is known (Wilderson, 2010). The articulation of ontological demands by the Black subject should be such that they should not be expected to be met or given, but they are demands that should be informed by the will to take. The reason for this is that these demands made by the Black subject cannot be attended to for the very fact that the location of the subject is excluded. To be excluded means not to exist, and what does not exist cannot be afforded the demands that are justified as being rightful to what exists. To be excluded affirms the position that freedom, justice, and equality should not be pursued, even if that is the call of the Black subject. To be in the register of freedom, justice, and equality is to evade the responsibility of having to bring to an end what makes the Black subject the insignificant other. For the ontological demands of the Black subject to be met, freedom, justice, and equality have to be obliterated as they are forms of oppressing tools. Therefore, the ontological demands by the Black subject are things that Black subjects ensure that they will have, because they are not and will not be given.

The Black subject exists in exclusionary structures of reality, which renders the existence of such a subject as a non-existence. No amount of historical gestures of freedom, justice, and equality will be able to rescue the Black subject from the clutches of subjection. The Black subject must wage his or her own struggle and refrain from being controlled by the liberal ethos, and also to think in terms of politics outside the imagination of the White liberal register. What freedom, justice, and equality seek do to is to rehabilitate the scandal of Whiteness and refashion it as some form of moral crusade while hiding behind the notion of humanity. The obliteration of Whiteness as the ontological category that brings misery to Blackness is something that Fanon attended to. It is to expose Whiteness for what it is—that is, gratuitous violence against the Black subject and then to account for the ways in which the life of the Black subject is made not to matter in the anti-Black world. The effort of the White liberal ethos in putting race at the center is the effort of White anti-racists, and in their effort and modes of articulation claiming to expose Whiteness and make it see its complicity in and culpability for the destruction of the Black subject. Such a crusade of White anti-racist efforts joins the White liberal sensitivities in that the problem is Whiteness as a structure. The anti-racist efforts should not be seen as addressing the problem of the Black subject, but rather as contributing to it. It is essential to point out that the White anti-racists’ efforts should be amongst Whites and for Whites. There is no need for Black subjects to participate in such discourses because White anti-racist crusaders are tourists in the lived experiences of the Black subject. They are not, in the politics of criticism, ending racism but just criticizing it.

The Black subjects who take an active part and fashion themselves as allies in the White anti-racist efforts claim to see no relevance of race in the anti-racist efforts. That is, the Black subject does not have the problem with Whiteness as the enunciator, and the register of such enunciation and what matters worse is that they think that the anti-racist efforts will bring the end to racism. The Black subject does not even consider questioning the very foundation of why the White anti-racist effort is being undertaken, and why Black subjects are not taking center stage in such discourses. The Black subjects who deny the dehumanizing effect of White anti-racist efforts are not curious as to why these discourses do not bring an end to the dehumanization of the Black subject. The Black subject is absent from the liberal register, and its sense of freedom, justice, and equality is a void. As Fanon (1961/1990) succinctly puts it, everything depends on the Black subject. To be in such a state of consciousness means that instead of being tokens of Whiteness as a political project that dehumanizes Blackness, the Black subjects have to come to themselves. The Black subject is the Black subject not through choice but by the condition, and, as such, this cannot be changed by the liberal gesture of freedom, justice, and equality—the very things that must be obliterated by the Black subject in order to create another register where the Black subject matters. But then, the Black subject still does not matter as it is reduced to the level of the body, and such a reduction operates on the basis of the racist gaze.

The White Gaze

The White gaze is hate of the Black subject, and, as such, it is racist. In the encounters that affirm the racist gaze—Look, a Negro!—Fanon here clearly shows how the gaze has a crushing effect on the Black subject who is reduced to the level of the body. The Black body not only belongs to itself but is also the property of the racist gaze. As a property, Fanon (1952/2008) shows that this body has no ontological resistance to the White gaze. As a result of the gaze, which was coupled with the shout from a young boy in the train—Look, a Negro! this makes the Black body to be what it is—something emptied of all forms of humanity. The White gaze renders the Black body alive or dead. Even if the Black subject tries to affirm love to the world and claim humanity, this becomes erased by the White gaze. Fanon’s (1952/2008) damning declaration is, “I am given no chance. I am over-determined without” (p. 87). Fanon clearly shows how the White gaze objectified him, and how that reminded him of his Blackness. This even led Fanon to claim to be human and to be excluded from the existential plain and being disfigured as a subject and what was thrown back at him as being an object, and he found himself in the midst of other objects. This not only means that Fanon was the human among those objects, but he was an object and was identical to those objects. The White gaze is not only the look; it is the crushing weight unto Blackness. For Fanon to be reminded of his Blackness is the very fact of reminding Blackness of its place in the anti-Black world, and that place means being expelled.

The racists’ gaze is the determining factor of Blackness. Look, a Negro! is a repeated shout, and Fanon responds in different ways. Fanon (1952/2008), in response, gives a tight smile, he was amused, and he says in retaliation for being caught, “[T]he circle was drawing a bit tighter, I made no secret of my amusement” (p. 84). Fanon then proceeds, because of the tenacity of the White gaze, to give a tight smile and to burst into tears and laughter. This did not help him as “laughter had become impossible” (Fanon, 1952/2008, p. 84). Fanon had been caught and could not escape the wrath of the White gaze. “My Blackness was there, dark and unarguable. And it tormented me, pursued me, disturbed me, angered me” (Fanon, 1952/2008, p. 88). It is clear from Fanon that the Black body as something possessed by the White racist gaze is summoned by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty. Consciousness of the body is negative in that the Black subject is socialized in such a way that the body is a curse—a thing unwanted in the anti-Black world. The hate of the Black body is projected in such a way that the Black subject is made to desire an escape from it.

I move slowly in the world, accustomed now to seek no longer for upheaval. I progress by crawling. And already I am being dissected under White eyes, the only real eyes. I am fixed. Having adjusted their microtomes, they objectively cut away slices of my reality. I am laid bare. I feel, I see in those with faces that it is not a new man who has come in, but a new kind of man, a genius. Why, it’s a Negro! (Fanon, 1952/2008, p. 87, emphasis in original)

Indeed, Fanon realized the very extent to which the gaze is not only the look but the very mechanistic way in which the subject can be turned into an object and also how the human can be dehumanized. Let alone the verbal expression, the very look is an invited gaze against the Black body of Fanon. The look piercing through the existence of Fanon having wished to escape Blackness, but of course this is impossible. The look is the look that says, “You are not like us and you are not supposed to here!” The look at the body of the Black, and to infer what is being seen is an array of stereotypes, “[t]he Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro is mean, the Negro is ugly” (Fanon, 1952/2008, p. 86).

The Black body is the target because of the mere fact of being made to be available to the White gaze as an object to be looked at. The White gaze assumes the form of the mechanistic terror unleashing suffering and misery on the flesh of the Black subject. The White gaze means that the Black subject is always in question. To be questioned means that Blackness must always justify its existence. This justification being not enough means that Blackness is in a void and is a void in itself. That is to say, the White gaze empties Blackness of all essence and form that constitute the life of the subject. The existence of the Black subject means being an object among many other objects.

I came into the world imbued with the will to find meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other object. (Fanon, 1952/2008, p. 82)

The gaze in itself is informed by the exercise of power and, as such, is asymmetrical in the sense that it is the determining factor in having to question the capacity of Blackness to exist. The look is not only an act but a power in itself, and to look is to possess power. In this exercise of power, the look places and displaces the Black subject in the realm of existence. “I had rationalized the world and the whole had rejected me on the basis of color prejudice” (Fanon, 1952/2008, p. 93). To place Blackness means that the Black subject is human, and to displace the Black subject means that the Black subject is not human. In both accounts, as they are informed by bad faith, it then means that they mean one and the same thing—that is, Black subjects are not human. Their different articulation of placing and displacing Blackness is interchangeable and arbitrary as they are within the same gaze, and the verbalization does not really confirm what the gaze sees.

Essentially, the human qua human is the ontological domain of Whiteness, and there is no need for the White subject to justify its existence, because its humanity is not brought into question. The White gaze with its racist inferences, fantasies, and registers and its verbal economy is the dehumanizing project. In its racist operation, it derives pleasure from the misery and agony that afflicts the Black subject. This White gaze constitutes sadistic impulses to the point of reaching an orgasmic state of seeing the Black subject as being an object—dehumanization par excellence. According to Yancy (2008), the White gaze has historical power, which gives weight to anti-Black racism. This gaze cannot be reduced in terms of individuality; it is representative of the whole power structure of Whiteness. Whiteness is the “predestined master of this world” (Fanon, 1952/2008, p. 97). By its very nature, Whiteness renders the world anti-Black. In the anti-Black world, the Black body is gazed upon by the whole weight of Whiteness. What comes into being when the White gaze is in operation is the panoptic thinking where the Black subject watches itself as if it is always watched. Panoptic thinking is the logic of surveillance, and what is watched is the Black body. The Black body is the body caught and also the self-caught body. It then means that the White gaze also permits and prohibits.

The racist gaze operates at another level, which is that Blackness is activated but to the point of its own self-destruction. This takes form and shape where Blackness becomes negative unto itself, engaging in the deepening of the inferiority complex and wanting to escape Blackness in order to be White. Knowingly, and from the position of the onlooker—Look a Negro!—the Black subject will not be comfortable to be looked at. This means the Black subject is expelled from the world, and his or her presence is questioned. Look a Negro shows that Fanon is unwanted. To be seen is to warrant Fanon to disappear, and that this was the intrusion of Fanon. Yancy posits that the boy was scared to see a Negro. This is because the racist imago of the Black subject qua Negro equates to the figure of a cannibal. The gaze constructs the Black body not as a being but as a thing to be scared of. The Black subject is reduced to a mere savage beast with the potential to eat human flesh—that is, the White body. The boy affirmed the cannibalistic fantasy when screaming that the Negro is about to eat him. As Yancy (2008) correctly notes, “the young boy represented White society’s larger perception of Blacks” (p. 72).

Fanon realizes that he performs the role of an intrusive racial imago for the White child, yet he cannot easily unburden himself from this scene without indulging in a pitiful denial of his Blackness. Fanon’s inability to escape this look of fear that imprisons, overwhelms, and designates him—combined as this inability is, say, with an awareness that the body’s persecutory assault is prompted by genuine fear rather than a desire to abuse—produces a state of confusion as to what exactly he has lost. (Marriot, 2007, p. 211)

To be seen means that Blackness is abstracted ontologically to what exists in that it is signified as not been human at the level appearance. To be the Black subject is to invite what Marriot (2007) refers to as a bonding over phobia in order to confront the phobogenic object. Blackness as a phobogenic object is determined by the White gaze as such, and raises nothing from White sensibilities but hate and fear, which calls the self-justification for the elimination of Blackness. It then means that the wanton violence unleashed toward Blackness is necessary because the phobia of Blackness is unbearable. To get rid of Blackness in order to get rid of the phobia is the very self-justification of Whiteness. The White gaze fixes the Black subject to the ontological zero point. It is from Fanon’s intervention where the understanding arises that what freezes the Black subejct to the in the state of objecthood is the phobia filled with racist fantasies. The racist gaze is the projection of images “shroud the Black ego by disrupting its imaginary integrity while allowing the White ego fantasy of mastery” (Marriot, 2007, p. 22). To look at the Black is to master the Black—the mastery based on stereotypes that freezes the ontology of Blackness. The White gaze, as Marriot shows, looks at Blackness with contempt and pity. The White gaze is in actual fact the hate of Blackness. The White gaze polices the Black body, and phobogenic intrusions are evoked to necessitate the very act of policing the Black body. This is what Marriot refers to as “racial misrecognition,” where to see is to see a Black, and nothing but a Black (Gordon, 1995). Gibson (2003) succinctly puts it thus: “[T]he Black was at best a ‘Black’” (p. 19).

The White gaze is set upon the Black subject to create the Black imago, which is the construction of White racist fantasies. Blackness has been woven into “a thousand of details, anecdotes, stories” (Fanon, 2008, p. 84). This, as Yancy (2008) argues, imprisons the Black subject through surveillance, which materializes by means of systematic and systemic violence. The body of the Black subject is under the White gaze as a thing, and this takes away the bodily experience of the Black subject. The battle of the Black body is existential because the body is disciplined and scripted as the inferior other—a thing. The White gaze proves that “[t]he Black body has been confiscated” (Yancy, 2008, p. 1). The racist gaze does not give anything, but rather, it extracts everything from Blackness. It extracts the very essence of being, and that justifies the place of Blackness at the ontological zero point. That which is at the ontological zero point cannot claim to be in the domain of existence because its very location is determined by the White gaze as non-existent.

The White gaze means that the White subject is the master signifier and, for that, the Black subject is represented from the vantage point of the White gaze. The master signifier has power over the Black subject and exercises control over the Black subject. This might be rejected as reductionist, but then, it is important to posit that even the resistance of Blackness from the White gaze is shaped by the very same gaze. The resistance is futile if it does not call for the end of the gaze, and that, of course, is the blinding of the gaze. The mode of resistance that calls for the gaze to change its perception of the way in which it looks at Blackness does not have any impact if it only keeps the gaze the way it is. The White gaze as the master signifier can only be de-authorized, and to do so is an act that depends on what is being looked at—the Black subject. For the Black subject to merely shout “what are you looking at!” is to invite the crushing weight of the White gaze, even if the eyes were to look in another direction. What remains is that the Black subject has just reified the gaze as the look will remain. It is to bring more attention to oneself by shouting. This will not alter why the Black subject is being looked at. So, the White gaze will be retained and fixated upon the self of the Black subject.

The politics of naming are foundational and constitutive to the White gaze. Look a Negro! means that what the gaze is fixated upon is designated with a name. To be a Negro is not to be a person, but to be depersonalized. The politics of naming work effectively in rendering the Negro—its referent as standing in place for something else but not a person—as that which should be looked at. The White gaze with its fixation fixes what it looks at. The negative connotations informed by racist stereotypes do not allow any form of resistance from its object, but mere docility because the object is not a subject. To be subjected to the White gaze with its fixation, the Black subject is not only named and dominated, but it is also dehumanized. The Black subject formation under the White gaze is rendered obsolete and not permitted as its activation is the very blinding of the gaze. The very motive of the White gaze in its dehumanization project is to paralyze any form of agency arising from the consciousness of the Black subject. As such, Blackness must remain outside the bounds of subject formation. This is the very act of the subject moving from objecthood—the very thing that the White gaze reduces Blackness to.

Consequently, the very form of tenacity of Blackness to engage in subject formation through the politics of antagonism is worthy of pursuit. The power of the White gaze to tame and crush Blackness in its modes of resistance is undermined by politics of antagonism as opposed to politics of affirmation, which just asks for the gaze to recognize Blackness. The politics of affirmation call for negotiation, reform, and a joint effort for the gaze to change the way it looks at Blackness. On the other hand, politics of antagonism calls for the continued struggle where Blackness seeks to destroy Whiteness as a racist infrastructure predicated upon Black suffering. They are in confrontation with the gaze and not wanting the gaze to change, but what this stems from is that the gaze must be blinded. The two political entities, although often conflated, are not informed by the same political agenda although the register might be the same, that is, both wanting the agency of the Black subject. In their self-definition of being located in the existential plane of Blackness, both differ in terms of what they want with regard to the White gaze. The politics of antagonism are waged not only at the level of existential struggle, but they are coupled with ontological demands that call for the removal of the White gaze. This is how the difference can be summed up, the gaze should change the way it looks at the Black subject (politics of affirmation), and the gaze should be blinded in order not to see the Black (politics of antagonism). Fanon, of course, is with the latter as opposed to the former. Despite Fanon’s politics of antagonism as the basis of affirming the humanity of the Black subject, their tenacity of subjection remains to maintain the plenitude of Blackness.

The Zero Plenitude of Blackness

Blackness as dispossessed by Whiteness is created as a criminalized and dishonored ontology. Ontological corruption of Blackness by Whiteness shows the erasure of Blackness by Whiteness. “Ontology—once it is finally admitted as leaving existence by wayside—does not permit us to understand the being of the Black man” (Fanon, 1952/2008, p. 82). Ontology has made the Black subject unattainable. The being of the subject is, as Fanon states, in relation to that of Whiteness. Thus, this suggests that the being of the Black subject is a creation of Whiteness. As a result, Blackness is expected to gravitate toward Whiteness to immunize itself against criminality and dishonor. Indeed, this gesture of redemption is bad faith because Blackness seeks to flee from itself. In no way can Blackness escape itself because it has and is still caught up in the ontological scandal—that is, Blackness is made to freeze under the stereotypes so that it acts on the verbal economy of insults, denigration, and reduction of Blackness from subjecthood to objecthood.

Blackness is criminalized and dishonored as the contaminator of purity (Whiteness), and this serves as a justification for the depletion of Blackness. To be depleted is to be removed from the catalogue of being as the criminalized and dishonored subject, which really means that there are less chances of Blackness being redeemed and welcomed in the community of being. Instead, what certainly takes central place is Blackness having to face the protective enclave of Whiteness, Blackness being expelled. To gravitate toward Whiteness as criminalized and dishonored is just an oxymoron, and even if there were no criminalization and dishonor, what Blackness (in bad faith, of course) wants to gravitate toward is impossible—Blackness cannot be Whiteness.

In essence, Blackness is the figure fixed by time and its ontology rendered non-existent. This is the very basis of subjection where Blackness is the subject without. To be without is to be ontologically void, the very justification of criminality and dishonor. To criminalize and dishonor Blackness in the scheme of things is not an ethical transgression, but very necessary, so that it does not even warrant any justification as there are no moral dilemmas in the ways in which subjection takes place. What is ethical does not apply when confronted by Blackness. Blackness does not deserve any form of ethics. Therefore, it means that ethics not extending to Blackness are all ethics, but it is clear that these are not ethics. How then is it possible for that which is criminalized and dishonored to have ethics extended to it? What is central is the erasure of the human, and what that means is that the Black subject is not human. This is the ontological project of White supremacy, and the ontological erasure of Blackness is not only abstract but also material.

The Black subject is the negative pathology, the other who is put outside the margins of the community of life. As the negative pathology, this means that when the reconciliatory gesture is paraded where the past wrongs are forgiven and Whiteness is removed from the base, Blackness in itself has to stop asking fundamental questions of its state of oppression. Nothing is even accounted for in terms of why the ontology of Blackness is still locked in criminalization and dishonor. What is important to bring out is the question of the body in relation to the Black subject being criminalized and dishonored. The body of the Black subject is the body of that which is racial—where to see the Black is to see the race and not the human—a body that is magnetic to marginal existence, or the obsoleteness of existence. The body is reduced to thingification, and, as Fanon points out, it is a body reduced to genitalia. As Fanon amplifies, the Black man is his penis. Criminality and dishonor reduce the existence of the Black subject to the things libidinal wherein the explanation of Black subjecthood is licentious, even in the treatment of the body.

The body of the Black subject is the property of Whiteness (Hartman, 1997). To be the property of Whiteness means that the Black subject is not a being for itself but a being for the captor. In such a state of captivity, the ontological standing and demands of the Black subject are collapsed, and Whiteness has the power to reign over the Black subject by conferring life and death on it. The Black subject is a being of the body in general and the genitals in particular. This, of course, is to empty the Black subject of all the ontological content. This psychic and verbal economy of Whiteness is constitutive and foundational to violence that puts the Black subject in the position of erasure. It is clear, as Fanon points out, that the reduction of the Black subject to the level of the genitalia, which is thingification, means that the body is fixed outside ontology. Whiteness as the constructor of Blackness through the idea of race, and its organizing principle of removing Blackness outside the ontological schema of things human, relegates Blackness to the ontological margins of being non-human. This is what Santos (2007) and Gordon (1995) refer to as the zone of non-being, which of course shows that race is Fanon’s Manichean structure making the ontological divisions between the zone of being and the zone of non-being. According to Fanon, the inferiority and superiority complexes are structured within its neurotic orientation, which then perpetuates the Manichean structure. The structure of this complex has dire consequences for the manner in which Blackness is relegated to the lived experiences.

Blackness as the ontological subject is a non-entity, the very thing that is the construction of Whiteness with its creation of the anti-Black world and, as a result, to construct Blackness not only as the other but also as the very basis of lack and deficit of Whiteness. At the ontological level, Whiteness is superior and Blackness inferior. This is not a matter of the willingness of Blackness per se to be inferior or having to live the self-fulfilling prophecy of Whiteness but the creation of the anti-Black world, which is the world that militates against the existence of Blackness. This is the world filled with the desire for Whiteness and, as a determining factor, always putting Blackness on the defensive simply because the existence of Blackness is always put into question and no amount of justification of Blackness will warrant any form of existence in the anti-Black world. The anti-Black world is simply the world without Blacks. Even if Blackness exists side by side with Whiteness, the militancy against Blackness through racism, exploitation, injustice, and violence, to name but a few, serves as testimony to the fact that Blackness is the ontological other. The very acts of militancy against Blacks through the affirmation of the anti-Black world as the expeller mean that for Blacks to exist is not to live but to survive. To survive is not to live, and to live is not to have one’s existence questioned.

Blackness is created by Whiteness simply because of what Fanon calls constant comparison of what is at the center of Whiteness, as that which is supposed to live, and Blackness, being dispensable to life. The politics of life is the struggle for Blackness in the anti-Black world, whereas it is a given to Whiteness. This form of life can only be found in the anti-Black world where, as Gordon states, race is the organizing principle. For race to be the organizing principle, there has to be some ontological hierarchy where Whiteness is superior and Blackness inferior, and Blackness will have a neurotic effort. In this effort, Blackness will be made to have this desire and fantasy to be White to the point of internalization but, alas, with no tangible result. For Blackness, the desire to be White essentially means that Blackness is no longer involved in the ontological struggle to live, but to disappear into Whiteness, and to have no ontological struggle because Whiteness cannot struggle to live in the life that is a given.

The lived experience of the Black subject is to understand the ways in which race is confronted, and it is a problem that creates the existential crisis of the Black subject. So, it is through the prism of race that the concept of the Black subject is understood in relation to Fanon’s thought. “Condemned to the life of the body, there is no memory and history. The Black is body and body’s death is death. The Black is a penis” (Gibson, 2003, p. 20, emphasis in original). If the Black subject is reduced to the level of genitalia, it then means that it symbolizes biological danger. Therefore, Blackness as a penis is a dangerous weapon. It therefore implies that Blackness is also rape. This relegates Blackness outside the realm of being and situates it within animality and also as sexually licentious. Yancy (2008) amplifies this to say that Blackness is not understood by Whiteness from the realm of being because the being of the Black subject is erased and Blackness is reduced to the level of the body, and in particular, the penis. The lived experience of the Black subject is bodily experience, that is, racial embodiment in the anti-Black world. The body of the Black subject reflects the existential condition of a crisis, and of being vulgarized.

For Blackness to claim to live is the very act of self-deception because there has to be the absence of anti-Blackness to live. To live also means that Blackness is not supposed to be caught in the politics of antagonism waging ontological struggles. To live will also mean that Blackness will not be at the receiving end of anti-Blackness, which appears in racism, exploitation, denigration, indignity, dispossession, and wanton violence, to name just a few, and all of which are waged both at the psychic and material sites of existence. To live for Blackness is something that Blackness is struggling toward and means that it is not there and ought to be there. What then emerges is the following question: If Blackness does not live, are Blacks human? To be human is to live, and not to be human is not to live; therefore, the affirmation is that Blacks are not human but non-human. This is the construction that Whiteness made out of Blackness, and if Blackness was within the bounds of humanity, there would be no need to reify the anti-Black world as the living order of beings and non-beings.

Arguably, Blacks are not humans because of the mere fact that their existence is that of survival. They are not humans as they are at ontological margins. Making Blacks believe that they are human and for them believing themselves to be such in the midst of the injustice, cruelty, and horror that confront their daily existence (even if they do not perceive their existence as such) is the very act of self-deception. This self-deception stems from the very fact of making Blackness to be blind to the existential crisis it faces its own reality. The mode of survival is put forward as if it is life, but in actual fact that in turn being, to invoke Fanon, “moving from one life to another.” Therefore, to be blind means that Blackness knows that it ought to become human but instead rather fears to confront such a reality. To live in the self-deception of being human while not being human means that Blackness lives the very construction of Whiteness. This even extends to the very notion that Blackness, not being human, is the largess of Whiteness. For Blackness to engage in the politics of self-confrontation, to confront not being human and advocating the will to become human is something that Blackness should do and not to be acted upon by Whiteness. Whiteness cannot dehumanize and at the same time humanize, the latter is the responsibility of Blackness itself and in itself.

Essentially, Blackness has to move outside the construction of Whiteness. Such an act will first require Blackness to come closer to itself. To be such will not mean the cosmetic rhetoric and gestures of non-racialism, post-racialism, and the recent romanticism called race transcendence. All deny, in different registers, the existence of racism and claim that Blacks are human, and in a similar register, they are ignorant of the anti-Blackness. These are, of course, registers that absolve Whiteness of responsibility and culpability and put the blame on Blackness, and as a solution, they claim that what is important is the future of the human, but without actually accounting whether Blackness falls within the category of the human. Non-racialism, post-racialism, and race transcendence are divorced from the existential category of the Black.

Blackness is something that must disappear and, what should be important to them is the category of the human. Indeed, where these registers are located, they are alien to the Black lived experience, and it is of no use to expect them to address this. They are devoid of ontological questions, which are central to Blackness, and they have no grammar of Black existential reality. The place of the Black subject in the anti-Black world cannot be made ethical but must be destroyed in order to create a new humanity. It must be a place of life and not survival—and as for Fanon’s question of what the Black subject wants, the answer is in the affirmative to say that the Black subject wants to be free and to be a subject qua subject. That is, the Black subject must be human, and to be human is to be free from subjection. This is a testimony to Fanon where being human and being free are inseparable.

Conclusion

It still remains that to be liberated is to emerge, and that is the creation of another world. The emergence of Black subjects is necessary to afford humanity to those who have been dehumanized. This cannot be actualized in a world that militates against Black subjects. The existential condition of the Black subject cannot be articulated and explained outside subjection. The foundational nature of the anti-Black world due to its systematic and continuous subjection needs to come to an end. It needs to be stated that the emergence of Black subjects is something that cannot be reduced to subjectivity or psychiatric forms of exorcizing subjection. This emergence is not accountable to forms that are transplanted outside the existential conditions of the Black subjects.

Black subjects are the ones who should become human since the configuration of the world, as it has been something that did not allow the Black subject any sense of being. Another world is possible wherein the Black subject can rise as a being and be in the state of being in permissible existential conditions. The concept of the Black subject in Fanon essentially means that the politics of interrogation is the route to making existential demands and to allowing the emergence of the Black subject as ontologically living. Such interrogation is primarily essential for understanding Fanon in relation to the humanity, which was, and still is, of concern to him, that which is excluded, marginalized, and oppressed, in short, humanity under the surveillance of subjection. So, the liberation of Black subjects, their emergence, is that which can bring them to humanity, but the anti-Black world must come to an end for this to be actualized.