Black Skin, White Masks

Black Skin, White Masks, published in 1952 at the age of 27 by Éditions du Seuil, is the first essay by Frantz Fanon. It explores the psychological effects of colonial racism on Black consciousness.

The work examines how colonialism and racism mark the unconscious of the colonized, particularly through the dimensions of language, body, and sexuality. Fanon interrogates the identity assignment imposed on Black people in a white world: « From the moment I am an object in another’s gaze, I feel myself both present and absent »¹.

Fanon also critiques the limits of existentialism and Freudian psychoanalysis in understanding racism. The work is a founding text of postcolonial studies and still reads as an acute analysis of the mechanisms of racial alienation.

Translated into English under the title Black Skin, White Masks (Grove Press, 1967), it has become an indispensable reference in the debate on racism, identity, and decolonization.

Sources

• https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantz_Fanon#%C5%92uvres
• Open Library data: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1323771W