Frantz Fanon’s Engagement with Phenomenology: Unlocking the Temporal Architecture of Black Skin, White Masks

Abstract

Abstract Attention to the role of phenomenology in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks is fundamental to an appreciation of the book’s progressive structure. And it is through an appreciation of this structure that it becomes apparent that the book’s engagement with phenomenology amounts to an enrichment, not a critique, of existential phenomenology, although the latter might appear to be the case at first sight, given Fanon’s rejection of certain aspects of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Black Orpheus.” This is demonstrated through an examination of Fanon’s references to Sartre, Günther Anders, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the book’s final crucial pages on temporality. His largely neglected relation to Karl Jaspers and the concept of historicity is also explored.