/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14773812]

Is he /lit/ approved?

[Anonymous No.14773816]

nope. brainlet cia shill with embarrassing ideas

[Anonymous No.14773834]

>>14773816
care to elaborate?

[Anonymous No.14773840]

>>14773834
not really. read one of his books. or honestly just read a summary, you'll get the idea pretty quick

[Anonymous No.14773843]

>>14773840
is the wretched of the earth someplace to start?

[Anonymous No.14773846]

>>14773843
im being serious when i say to just read the wikipedia page for it and then spend your time reading something better

[Anonymous No.14773895]

>>14773843

Not >>14773846

Read Black Skin White Masks, then Wretched.

I can guarantee you that >>14773846 has an embarrassingly dim understanding of Fanon and thinks that his ideas boil down to “white bad” without any scrupulousness to them. Fanon is a towering figure in the fields of black existentialism, particularly Afro-Pessimism, and most anons have such veiled thinking their attempts to grasp it are like trying to grab a flower in smoke. Then when they come out with nothing in hand due to their own delusion, they turn around and assert “it’s just senseless nigger talk”. It’s obvious and has been obvious to black intellectuals, organizers, culture workers, and others for decades. Let me be clear, black alienation, invisibility, thingification, and other colonialist tendrils have made it so that the inner workings of our cultural expression, whether on academic, aesthetic, or what have you, are entirely obfuscated to onlookers even if they read the book cover to cover and supposedly digest the ideas. Just as Sankara said “La Français ne comprend pas L’Afric”, non-blacks universally, but particularly the grossly deluded whites, have childlike comprehension of our expression and our being.

Read Fanon, Lewis Gordon, Sylvia Wynter, Kwame Nkrumah, WEB DuBois, Fred Moten, bell hooks, and you’ll have your toes wet in the black existentialist rabbit hole. Listen to blind anons who don’t even know the names Wynter or Moten talk their shit about “brainlet chill” and you’ll be jut as lost as they are. It’s on you.

[Anonymous No.14773896]

>>14773846
I am already reading about Eichmann from Arendt. I think it's a good follow up if I'm already reading about civil rights and marginalized groups.

[Anonymous No.14773906]

>>14773895
As a North African living in Europe, do you think it's better for me to read Arab Existentialist literature or would Black Existentialist literature be similar enough?

[Anonymous No.14773918]

>>14773906

I haven’t read into the Arab existentialist tradition at all, I’d like if you could tell me more about it actually. And if you’re a North African black I’d suggest being familiarized with Fanon, Senghor, Nkrumah, Sankara, and Caesar since they’re the figureheads of non-American black thought, as you may already know. But the American tradition is the most vast.

[Anonymous No.14773924]

>>14773918
I am not to familiar with it either but from what I know there's a lot of Arab interest for Sartre. I'm sure there's some out there but I'd have to research it first. I have black ancestry but I'm more Caucasian than negroid.

[Anonymous No.14773932]

>>14773924

I see, well dive in anon. Keep your mind open and don’t listen to white supremacists about anything that involves black theory or experience. Not even white leftists on this board will give you a proper understanding here. You wanna know about black traditions? Talk to black people, get to know the black Africans in your family if you can, and remove biases to the best of your ability. The black body and mind is under constant metamorphosis within the colonialist imagination, they don’t even touch its essence because they’re so busy rearranging its appearance.

[Anonymous No.14773972]

>>14773918
Fanon has his limitations but is good. I'd stay away from African-American lit and go venture more into African and to a lesser extent Carribean ones.

[Anonymous No.14774004]

>>14773972

No, I wouldn’t. bell hooks, DuBois, Davis, Shakur, Newton, Malcolm, Gordon, and others, are all quite necessary. What’s your issue with the black American tradition?

[Anonymous No.14774213]

Pet nigger of the french intelligentsia. Didnt really have much original to say, and was too much of a coward to admit that his ethnic nationalism would really just end up like a form of national socialism but with Africans. Its the biggest pile of nonsense of all post-colonialism and third worldism that somehow being non-white prevents one from being or becoming an oppressor.

[Anonymous No.14774305]

>>14774213

Obtusely identifying Fanon in his relation to whites rather than black and brown people is only one in several tells of your gross incomprehension. You don’t even know how black theorists have dissected Fanon but condescendingly attempt to legitimize your delusion on the matter. Everything you’ve typed proves your misconstruction, it’s ironic you don’t know how dismissible it is. Not to say I’m unaware of the irony in me even telling you that despite knowing so.

[Anonymous No.14774310]

>>14773816
fpbp

[Anonymous No.14774323]

>>14773812
N

[Anonymous No.14774335]

>>14774213
>national socialism but with Africans

>tfw this is 100% true
>tfw supporting third worldism to my woke sjw friends because of this
>tfw they think i'm some kind of tranny communist
>tfw the Fourth Reich will have excellent diplomatic relations with the Ascended Negro Collective

[Anonymous No.14774379]

>>14774305
>Obtusely identifying Fanon in his relation to whites rather than black and brown people is only one in several tells of your gross incomprehension.

Except that's what his ideology has always been and what all those who followed him ended up being. None of them ever really took off the shackles that whitey put on. If you look at black nationalists of any kind, they usually cant go for two sentences without talking about white people. For as much as modern wokies complain about Hegelian Otherhing, they themselves cannot seem to live without turning whitey into the ultimate Other.

[Anonymous No.14774635]

>>14774379

Your diagnoses of the black existentialist tradition and communal decolonization are inaccurate not only because of the hyperbolic assertions regarding the content of our writing but the painfully misguided presumption on our dealings with the ”Other” concept. Read Sylvia Wynter and Lewis Gordon to be elucidated here. I’ll hold your hand a bit and say that there isn’t an anxiety in regards to becoming an Other to whites so much as a necessitation of deconstructing the psychological maladies resultant from the myths associated with their Otherhood to us. The decolonization project, from an existential perspective, is quite directly an effort to reconstruct our epistemological, aesthetic, metaphysical, and ethical conditions, amongst other vestiges of white influence, into an Afrocentric worldview (though for some, including Fanon, a simply post-racial one that may or may not include Afrocentric parameters) to work in conjunction with our material liberation struggle. What you’ve described does not graze these facts so much as speak to your own deficits in trying to understanding them. If you understood Fanon at all, not to mention the inheritors of his tradition, you’d be beyond those dense platitudes on black theory.

[Anonymous No.14774661]

>>14774379

Oh and lastly, because this may be unclear: colonialism is what turned whitey into the “ultimate Other”, we didn’t magically invent it, we wouldn’t have cared if there weren’t entire systems established to reinforce the illusion of its significance. Where’s your logic? Pre-colonialism whitey wasn’t an issue, so how can we attribute the necessity of dismantling white supremacist ideology to an autonomously born fixation on whiteness rather than a natural response to whiteness’ fixation on hegemony. It’s an ahistorical suggestion, you didn’t even think it through.

[Anonymous No.14774758]

>>14774004
How most relate to Africa. They come at it with the black/white dichotomy as ontologically prior to everything else because that's what living in the racist USA has taught them. Most don't grasp Africa as a continent where people with many different ontological systems live and that blackness is not the be-all end-all of Africans' their struggles. The discrepancy between existential issues in US Black Studies' theorizing Africa and theorizing Africa from the continent is striking, to the point where Afro-Americans claiming they're Africa is almost LARPing.

At least Fanon pushing the dichotomy even though he knew from his practice in Algeria how complex things got psychologically, had a direct strategic goal.

[Anonymous No.14774792]

>>14774758

I’d say this is true for some groups of black proletariat and lumpenproletariat though not necessarily intellectuals. In fact, for awhile black Americans have be analyzing that very reality and navigating it with attempts to properly conceive a Pan-African philosophy. You’re underrating Africana thought here but I won’t say you’re wrong in regards to certain masses.

[Anonymous No.14774952]

>>14774335
Nazism and Zionism profited from each other, too, incidentally.

[Anonymous No.14775212]

>>14774661
>we
ah, the butthurt negro reveals himself. How does it feel to become a chinese colony and being unable to do anything about it because all the postcolonialist morons cant deal with the fact that a non-white might be a colonizing power?
Like i said, there's no way modern black activists could ever remove their shackles. Theyre slaves at heart, and even if every white man were to die, theyd still find a way to blame him for everything, getting nothing done, and getting fucked over and over.

[Anonymous No.14775281]

Tell me how Fanon's african nationalism is any different from white nationalism without using "they were historically oppressed!".

[Anonymous No.14775925]

>>14775281
His is a reaction to the other.

[Anonymous No.14775939]

>>14775925
Rather, instead of just old nazism he reacts to the supposedly egalitarian west with racist undercurrents.

[Anonymous No.14775941]

>>14775212
Unfortunatelly there's truth in this post

[Anonymous No.14775953]

>>14775925
Even if that were true, it doesnt give a justification for why black nationalism will either put an end to nationalism altogether, or is somehow better than white nationalism.

[Anonymous No.14775956]

>>14775939
>with racist undercurrents
Do you know how reactionary politics work? I give you a hint - The key word here is 'reactionary'.

[Anonymous No.14775971]

>>14775941
>Baldwin
Just went on a binge on black civil rights advocates some days ago on yt. They don't make them like they used to. Great guy.

[Anonymous No.14776552]

>>14775212
>>14775941

White intellectual dishonesty is as boring as it’s ever been. Yes it’s obvious that you don’t understand the black existential tradition, no the feigned snobbery isn’t believable. Just appreciate that I left recommended reading and a partial understanding of the philosophy. It’ll be a self-service if you stop kidding yourself about knowing anything regarding Africana theory. Just re-read what I said and go on.

[Anonymous No.14776651]

>>14776552
Im Singaporean, senpai. I dont care about whites. The fact that you assumed im Arab only confirms my suspicion that you cannot escape the ethereal bonds of your white masters. You still feel the lash of their whip on your soul.
In fact, Singapore is a good example on why being a little bitch about your colonial past wont get you anywhere, while being the governor of your own destiny most certainly does.

[Anonymous No.14776867]

>>14776552
What's your thoughts on pic related?

[Anonymous No.14776897]

>>14776651

Ok this is the last one I’ll give since I’m dragging it lol. If you refuse to engage with Africana theory or any real elements of the black perspective then you’re still dealing with a warped psyche, regardless of whatever you ascribe to ours. Maybe you’ll reflect on that I don’t know. And I really don’t care where you’re from, the boring, tactless, pseudo-intellectual sludge is all the same. If you’re lucky you’ll learn how your condition constricts you, but I think you’ll try your best to ignore it out of spite lol. Enjoy Singapore or whatever, at least there you won’t annoy black people.

[Anonymous No.14776912]

>>14776897
black people usually annoy everyone else instead

[Anonymous No.14776926]

>>14776867

I wish I had some because he’s been rec’d to me before and I haven’t gotten to it yet. I’m mostly read on Americans and am familiar only with the popular French-speaking (usual Senghor, Sankara, etc.). Mbeme doesn’t seem as popular in the black leftist circles I’m used to as people like Nkrumah and Fanon as far as non-Americans go. What are your thoughts on him though?

[Anonymous No.14776998]

>>14776926
I enjoyed 'Out of the Dark Night'. His quotes and footnotes made it a more extensive read for me, because they pointed to Fanon and, pleasantly surprising, to Ho Chi Min.
I don't have an extensive list of other (pan-)african intelectuals I have read, but he could probably be considered more on the moderate side, I think; I remember his texts were pretty "French"; you could tell he comes from the French academic tradition and my guess is that this might put some people off- He seemed influenced by people like Deleuze. My thought at the time was whether or not obviously stemming from a European academic tradition like that wouldn't make you suspicious in the whole discourse, but then again- I'm white and not from Africa, so what do I know.
I remember him coming down hard on the pseudo-pure cult about European Enlightenment, listing the historical dark spots and the hypocricy of it and some of it's figure heads (maybe harder than needed), but suggesting the virtues of it as a starting point anyway. And that all seemed and seems pretty reasonable to me, as an outsider at least.

[Anonymous No.14777030]

>>14776998

Well this definitely encourages me to prioritize reading him the. And well the American existential tradition with people like Lewis Gordon, Fred Moten, and even Angela Davis is well framed by European thought, so outside of black nationalist circles, i doubt Mbembe would be outcasted for that. And while the issue of whitely grown black intellectuals has been known in general, I personally attempt to synthesize any useful knowledge with an Afrocentric lens.

And to the note of the Enlightenment, it doesn’t seem far from Nkrumah’s beliefs regarding approaching colonialism scientifically rather than dogmatically, so to say, appropriating valuable tools from the West where necessary, rather than uncritically denouncing them.
The black French perspective is interesting but I think the American is more complete, though I have my biases as an American myself.

[Anonymous No.14777117]

>>14777030
>approaching colonialism scientifically rather than dogmatically, so to say, appropriating valuable tools from the West where necessary, rather than uncritically denouncing them
Yes, that's pretty much Mbembe's jam as well. I think he kind of coined or invented the term pan-africanism, too.
I have made friends with a few artists and writers from central to south Africa which some university-near museum here tends to give invitations and platforms here; pretty 'inspiring', to use a term that has unfortunately been used to its death in this day and age and part of the world.
The whole post-colonial shitshow seems like a huge field. It's like a huge boat with all kinds of problems, including open fires, while still on the move. So I acknowledge how a pragmatic lense would seem the foremost important.
I can't and couldn't help but coming back to some nagging questions reaching more to the theoretical bottom of the discourse- Namely how, as a post-colonial African person you could ever hope to get to an idea of an African identity which isn't half-bread by it's former colonizers: Universities, Nation states - hell I mean even the whole concept of art outside music seems to be grammar of the language that had been forced on you.
It seems as hopeless as what I grasp from actual feminism (and I'm most certainly not the first person to draw this parallel) to leave behind or at least discern to a degree what is the patriarchical indoctrination and to find out what is an actual female approach to life and reality.

[Anonymous No.14777136]

>>14777030
What do you think of James Baldwin btw?

[Anonymous No.14777158]

>>14777117
>Namely how, as a post-colonial African person you could ever hope to get to an idea of an African identity which isn't half-bread by it's former colonizers

Not him, but the answer is science. History, namely. As is with feminism. You can't go back, but you can uncover your heritage and process it.

[Anonymous No.14777260]

Blacks are literally retarded sans a few.

[Anonymous No.14777286]

>>14777117

This is a proper analysis of the situation, however I believe that psychological decolonization may prompt a more elastic approach to the constituents of Afro-Identity. Americans have been dodging static definitions of blackness since the Black Arts so rigidly imposed it, in turn producing the “post-blackness” of today wherein ”blackness is its subject, not its source” among other innovations lies. Likewise the African may take this approach, renounce static identity and build in the moment, just as Fanon said, as a ball of fire rather than ogling the past. It’s the most practical and truest to authentic liberation I believe, at least on cultural and psychological levels. If we understand that the spirit of Africa is transcendant and absorbant, >>14777117

This is a proper analysis of the situation, however I believe that psychological decolonization may prompt a more elastic approach to the constituents of Afro-Identity. Americans have been dodging static definitions of blackness since the Black Arts so rigidly imposed it, in turn producing the “post-blackness” of today wherein ”blackness is its subject, not its source” among other innovations lies. Likewise the African may take this approach, renounce static identity and build in the moment, just as Fanon said, as a ball of fire rather than ogling the past. It’s the most practical and truest to authentic liberation I believe, at least on cultural and psychological levels. If we understand that the spirit of Africa is transcendant and absorbant, rather than some immutably sacred, delicate jewel, we may recognize the continuum of its beauty and discover its spark in each stage of individuation. But to be confident in the permanence of a thing is to know the constituents of its being, and in the case of our spirit, that’s something perpetually dissected. The whole situation requires many angles of work. Nascent afrofuturist philosophies are very relavent here.

[Anonymous No.14777294]

>>14777117

This is a proper analysis of the situation, however I believe that psychological decolonization may prompt a more elastic approach to the constituents of Afro-Identity. Americans have been dodging static definitions of blackness since the Black Arts so rigidly imposed it, in turn producing the “post-blackness” of today wherein ”blackness is its subject, not its source” among other innovations lies. Likewise the African may take this approach, renounce static identity and build in the moment, just as Fanon said, as a ball of fire rather than ogling the past. It’s the most practical and truest to authentic liberation I believe, at least on cultural and psychological levels. If we understand that the spirit of Africa is transcendant and absorbant, rather than some immutably sacred, delicate jewel, we may recognize the continuum of its beauty and discover its spark in each stage of individuation. But to be confident in the permanence of a thing is to know the constituents of its being, and in the case of our spirit, that’s something perpetually dissected. The whole situation requires many angles of work. Nascent afrofuturist philosophies are very relavent here.

[Anonymous No.14777322]

>>14777136

A beloved icon and worthwhile introduction to the black existential tradition, though largely incomplete and surpassed by the likes of DuBois and Malcolm as far as popular figures go. Ultimately a treasure, though manipulated by liberals and misguiding if read as a zenith of black thought. Quite dear to me personally.

[Anonymous No.14777336]

>>14777294
Thanks.

[Anonymous No.14777346]

>>14777322
>manipulated by liberals
How so? I've only heard a few interviews and a speach or another.

[Anonymous No.14777361]

>>14775971
He was a sycophant liberals cling to so they can pretend to be radicals. Doesn't help that his prose is lacking too.

[Anonymous No.14777368]

absofuckinglutely

[Anonymous No.14777381]

>>14777346

I just mean liberals appropriate him to feign criticality on black issues despite being opposed to true radicalism. He was openly compassionate and that’s always been easy to pervert, just like King.

[Anonymous No.14778215]

>>14776651
this is literally fanons argument