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Neurosis
Alienation refers to the condition of being estranged from oneself and one’s surroundings. Its meaning varies in the Marxist and psychoanalytic traditions, but Fanon uses it to describe the ways in which black people are made to exist in relation to others and to identify with whiteness rather than their own blackness.
Alienation Quotes in Black Skin, White Masks
The Black Skin, White Masks quotes below are all either spoken by Alienation or refer to Alienation. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 2
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Both the black man, slave to his inferiority and the white man, slave to his superiority, behave along neurotic lines. As a consequence, we have been led to consider their alienation with reference to psychoanalytic descriptions.
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Chapter 4
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The Malagasy no longer exists… the Malagasy exists in relation to the European. When the white man arrived in Madagascar he disrupted the psychological horizon and mechanisms.
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Chapter 5
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Shame. Shame and self-contempt. Nausea. When they like me, they tell me my color has nothing to do with it. When they hate me, they add that it’s not because of my color. Either way, I am a prisoner of the vicious circle. I turn away from these prophets of doom and cling to my brothers, Negroes like myself. To my horror, they reject me. They are almost white. and then they'll probably marry a white woman and have slightly brown children. Who knows, gradually, perhaps . . .
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Chapter 8
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Intellectual alienation is a creation of bourgeois society. And for me bourgeois society is any society that becomes ossified in a predetermined mold, stifling any development, progress, or discovery. For me bourgeois society is a closed society where it's not good to be alive, where the air is rotten and ideas and people are putrefying. And I believe that a man who takes a stand against this living death is in a way a revolutionary.
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Alienation Term Timeline in Black Skin, White Masks
The timeline below shows where the term Alienation appears in Black Skin, White Masks. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 6: The Black Man and Psychopathology
...comics, songs, and history books designed for black children to help them avoid feelings of alienation.
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...White Masks will be a “mirror” through which black people “can find the path to disalienation.” Fanon has noticed that black people are increasingly trying to universalize their own experience, which...
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