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The Antilles is a group of islands in the Caribbean that includes Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. However, Fanon’s usage of the term refers specifically to the French Antilles, which are the French-colonized Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. The term “Antilleans” here refers to the black population of these islands, whose ancestors originally arrived to the islands as slaves from Africa to work for French colonists.
Antilles/Antillean Quotes in Black Skin, White Masks
The Black Skin, White Masks quotes below are all either spoken by Antilles/Antillean or refer to Antilles/Antillean. 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 1
Quotes
When an Antillean with a degree in philosophy says he is not sitting for the agrégation because of his color, my response is that philosophy never saved anybody. When another desperately tries to prove to me that the black man is as intelligent as any white man, my response is that neither did intelligence save anybody, for if equality among men is proclaimed in the name of intelligence and philosophy, it is also true that these concepts have been used to justify the extermination of man.
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Chapter 7
Quotes
The Antillean does not possess personal value of his own and is always dependent on the presence of "the Other." The question is always whether he is less intelligent than I, blacker than I, or less good than I. Every self-positioning or self-fixation maintains a relationship of dependency on the collapse of the other.
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Antilles/Antillean Term Timeline in Black Skin, White Masks
The timeline below shows where the term Antilles/Antillean appears in Black Skin, White Masks. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: The Black Man and Language
...in the company of whites. In this chapter, he will outline the way that black Antilleans become “whiter” through their absorption into the French language. All colonized people are forced to...
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Antilleans who spend time in France imitate the “correct” pronunciation of the French language to a...
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...new language, and points out that this is not just true of people from the Antilles but in fact all colonized peoples. Black people from the Caribbean tend to think of...
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...but argues that the problem of the inferiority complex is far more complicated than this. Antilleans speak “correct” French in order to prove themselves to whites, and as schoolchildren they are...
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...are reading authors who challenge existing power structures, such as Marx). Fanon notes that some Antilleans who return from France continue to speak Creole and deliberately try to make it seem...
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Chapter 2: The Woman of Color and the White Man
...making up for this natural inferiority. Fanon worries about these women returning home to the Antillles to teach children.
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Chapter 3: The Man of Color and the White Woman
...autobiographical novel Un homme pareil aux autres (A Man Like Any Other), about a black Antillean called Jean Veneuse who has lived in Bordeaux, France for many years. In the novel,...
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...men who were caught having sex with white women would be castrated. Fanon notes that Antillean men newly-arrived in France tend to be obsessed with the prospect of sleeping with a...
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Chapter 6: The Black Man and Psychopathology
...perform the function of catharsis for black children (even though they are beloved in the Antilles). Comics encourage black children to identify with the white heroes of the story, which sows...
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...white families preserve and replicate society’s values and overall “structure.” He repeats the argument that Antilleans in France are forced to feel “inferior” to white people. For black people, racism is...
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Before Césaire and Négritude, most Antilleans did not even think of themselves as black. When black people encounter white culture, they...
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Fanon notes that while his focus is on the Antilles, there are black populations living under Belgian and British colonial rule as well as independent...
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Chapter 7: The Black Man and Recognition
...face of those who are supposedly superior. This creates a strong sense of competitiveness among Antilleans, who develop the “desire to dominate” one another. Fanon writes that Martinicans are desperate for...
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...psychology only in individual terms and that this is insufficient to describe the situation of Antilleans. The whole of the Antilles is “a neurotic society, a comparison society.” Fanon argues that...
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