Reviews and Comments

For the shortness of this text, it gave me so much to think about. It is a very dense text in this way. Roughly, the first half of the book is about antisemites and the second half about Jews. Just from the implications of the fact that it was written, this text gives us a glimpse into the discourse around Jews in 1946 France. It is hard to believe how normalized open antisemitism still was in post WW2 France. Seeing that Sartre feels the need to argue for the basic rights and existence of Jewish people is honestly kind of horrifying. The Overton window must have been really bad back then. About the analysis itself: the description of "the antisemite" seems extremely specific, maybe too specific. Maybe Sartre is describing a type of guy that only existed in his specific time and place. Or maybe he is mixing personal distaste (understandable!) into his analysis and thereby missing the core of antisemitism: he isn't describing an ideology, but a character flaw. But maybe that is his point. Some of his analysis of antisemitism seems applicable to all prejudices against minorities, like the disgust, fear, sexualization, etc. Other parts seem specific to antisemitism, like the conflation of Jewishness with the abstract and universal, and identification of the antisemite with a mystical heritage from which property derives. One interesting feature of the text is that it barely mentions Jewish culture at all. One of his main points is that Jewishness is produced by the antisemite. Jewishness is only defined negatively. I guess the reason why this stands out to me now, is that between Sartre and me lie decades of identity politics. I guess one thought differently about identity, group identity, minority identity in the 1940s. This was a really interesting insight for me, however trivial it may be for others. This in turn makes me think of second wave feminism and how the second wave understanding of the social construction of woman follows the exact same model. It makes sense considering de Beauvoir's influence. Fascinating stuff.

I have strayed from the topic of this review, but this just goes to show how many new thoughts and connections this text gave me. I would really like to know, though, whether back when it came out there was any criticism from the Jewish community about his downplaying of Jewish culture and the existence of positive Jewish community. I imagine there must have been?

The structure is a little lacking. The chapters are thematically consistent internally, but why any chapter was put where it was is unclear. There is no explicit overarching argument. The addressed audience is anticolonial revolutionaries and a big portion of the book is advice on the way from revolutionary struggle to nation-building. I found these parts boring and hard to get through, they don't really seem relevant anymore. The chapter On national culture is an exception, it is quite thought provoking and I will revisit it. The chapter about mental illness under colonialism is another exception. It is way more concrete and grounded than the other chapters. The case studies of patients are quite heavy to read and definitely left an impression on me.

I'm glad I read this book because it's a classic, but for the most part I'm also glad I'm done with it. Peau noire masques blancs was the better Fanon, unexpectedly.

I really like travel literature so that helped. I really enjoyed this little book. What I liked best was the description of how different regions in Germany feel different to wander through. What I liked least was the aside about PoC and LGBT people being "privileged minorities" or whatever. The selling point of the book is a little absurd on the face of it: "Only 6 % of Germany is covered with asphalt or concrete, yet we only hear the perspectives of the people from there. I went outside the beaten path to hear from the rest". Like obviously 94 % of the surface doesn't mean 94 % of the population. Almost 80 % of Germany's population live in cities. The people the author met on his journey are absolutely not representative of a silent majority or anything like that. Of course, that doesn't mean their stories aren't worth hearing (which is why the book is still very enjoyable); it does mean though, that you'll have a hard time extracting some larger political point from a few conversations you had (which is why every attempt at that throughout the book is annoying and betrays the author's biases). The book is good as a travelogue though. The prose is above decent, the politics are cringe, the structure and length are just right. Very enjoyable.

Fanon takes a lot from psychoanalysis in his description of the psychological effects of colonialism. He describes the subjectivity of the oppressed who are led to identify with their oppressor and are alienated from themselves. He replies to a lot of other texts, quotes a lot of black poets. He replies to Sartre, it made me want to read Sartre's "question juive". He also replies to some authors that are irrelevant nowadays, these parts are a little boring because he kinda assumes that the reader has read them. The parts about white women wanting to be raped, or about white racists being repressed homosexuals, sound pretty bad nowadays. All in all, he is at his most astute when describing the condition of the colonized (which, luckily, is most of the book). He gets a little weird and bad when psychoanalyzing the colonizers. Some passages are really well written and highly quotable.

This is a book based on an article, or rather it is an article inflated to the size of a book. I was able to tell after 30 pages, and got confirmed afterwards. This seems like a common practice in the US publishing world: an article-sized essay gets inflated through the addition of an introduction where terms are defined, and the insertion of examples. The argumentative structure stays the same, only now instead of occasionally nodding towards an example to support an argument, every argument gets one to several examples that are stretched to wikipedia length. This practice isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the case of this book, some of the examples given are things I didn't know anything about (the decolonial struggles of Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde), so this is a nice opportunity to learn something new. But all in all, this practice makes good essays longer and worse. If it is often hard to tell what point Táíwò is trying to make when he goes into biographical details of some historic figure, that might be because these details aren't conducive to the point at all - they are just upping the word count. After finishing the book just now, I read the article that originated it (in the Boston Review, no paywall). The article makes several points that confused me in the book way clearer. In particular, the article cites Frazier's "Black Bourgeoisie" to generalize the point it makes about, well, elite capture. The book, on the other hand, gives us Frazier's backstory, the story of his parents, his intellectual legacy, etc. All this achieves (besides being interesting in the way a wikipedia article is) is to obscure the argument that Táíwò actually wants to make. So this is my conclusion: read the article. The book contains the same points, made with more words and less clarity. The points themselves are very good! The concept of elite capture is useful for critiquing nonconstructive uses of identity politics. It's a shame that the publishing industry doesn't incentivize conciseness.