In most of this week’s reading I found a strong connection with literature and its various genres. In Frantz Fanon’s article “The Negro and Psychopathology” he mentions how an image is constructed by a child in Africa about ‘Negroes’ and he in school identifies himself/herself with the ‘explorer’ or with the ‘white’. Therefore, we see that the construction of the image starts from the childhood in school with readings; it develops and strengthens till the child grows. Fanon states “…..there is a constellation of postulates, a series of proposition that slowly and subtly – with the help of books, newspapers, schools and their texts, advertisements, films, radio – work their way into one’s mind and shape one’s view of the world of the group to which one belongs.” In other words they are the ‘Ideological State apparatus’ as stated by Louis Althusser which constructs images, desires, wishes etc in our mind.
In Shelley Fisher Fishkin’s reading ‘Interrogating “whiteness”’ the above argument can very well be observed. There is a discussion on American literature in America as ‘white’ and an African – American literature as ‘black’ where the American literature or the ‘white’ literature is taught by white persons and Afro – American literature by persons of color. One can see not only the authors probably but even teachers are segregated by the color of the skin and I wonder whether students are also segregated. For instance white student will choose to study American literature and a non white student will choose Afro –American literature. However, we see in this article the important role of one of the ‘Ideological State Apparatus’ i.e. books or literature. Fishkin mentions how Dana Nelson examines ‘the ways in which seventeenth – , eighteenth – and early nineteenth – century white writers constructed versions of their own identity (and of American identity) by defining themselves as unlike various racial and ethnic “others”’. Hence, Fanon says that the root of this problem is books – the magazines, adventures of Mickey Mouse, Tarzan stories – which the Antillean child reads are written by white men for white kids so the devil or the demon is always associated either with ‘Negroes’ or ‘Indians’ which distances the African kid from her/his culture and brings her/him closer to the ‘white’ culture which is after all an illusion especially when he grows up and develops a contact with Europe. The only solution to this problem as suggested by Fanon is creation of books and magazines for the African kids and until then this problem would exist.
It is also very interesting to note that in India people are obsessed with the skin color as white. The color white is also associated with beauty. There are various creams for both men and women to become fairer and it is further interesting to see that these companies are growing faster in the market which can be understood with the demand of these products in the country. Both men and women want to get married to a white skin person. While reading these articles I was wondering whether the connection with the white skin is actually deriving from the same root as the authors in this week’s reading are arguing about.