The alchemist
VIP
I saw the text posted by @TruthBomber on the currently reading book thread:
It inspired me to delve a bit into what I remember from the book with additional personal interpretive impact frameworks. I wanted to respond directly to the comment, but the text was somewhat extensive and thought a separate thread was more appropriate (unsure what section to put it in, so I opted for General. Give any suggestions for better designation).
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"Black Skin, White Masks" is the book where Fanon describes how the socio-cultural and socio-economic hierarchy and standing of his people were set by the standard of prestige from how relatively proximal the French mainland culture impacted his homeland Martinique, right?
I found it interesting how the colonized people adopted social and cultural definitional inventory where everything local, vernacular, or unique from the colonizers was looked at as inferior (for example, creole or even speaking French with an accent), so people that were looked at as respectable, educated, worldly, and sophisticated had to perpetually go toward a self-denying process and "wash" themselves off who they were to then stand on a higher ground amongst their people.
That's why some families would force strict discipline on their children to speak proper French from an early age and make sure to de-incentivize any tendencies toward a colloquial culture for any hope of becoming someone in society. Social mobility was a continuous cultural washing process, deep-rooted in self-hate and self-denial, telling themselves they are only more worthy of dignity through the White man's archetype. An accent or speaking in patois was a mark of stain.
This originated from how the colonial rulers would stratify and make elites out of the ones who approximated them the most, that cultural and social mimicry, showing desperate paradoxical degrading appropriation, was rewarded ascendancy, so this grew firm roots in the internal social advancement and preferential norms for economic climbing.
You can draw the same conclusion on how mixing and having French genetic origin played a part in this internalized perceived White superiority and adoption of other behavioral cues that accompanied the traits of the French man. It's sad how those French Antillians were mentally abused to the point where they preserved it post-colonialism.
And because of this, I speculate one seeks out the dependent satellite nature of one's own people's status as the extension of the dominant hegemony. Isolation or independence means separation and greater distance -- a force that ruptures the paradigm of social existence up to that point, so I can see how one perpetuates the collective secondary constrained ceiling because at least that validates their sense of disadvantaged co-dependency.
Otherwise, they had to redefine their distinct standing, putting themselves at the center and examining their autonomous existence, which is not trouble-free since a resilient social movement has to replace it. The consequences would mean many will fall and be disoriented, lose spirit, and indulge more in self-loathing channeled in various ways while most improve.
The issue of that transitional, costly roadmap can be a strong reason why such places don't seek total economic, institutional, and political sovereignty. Even if they increasingly become self-reliant and eventually self-dependent, you observe that they stick to ritualistic and symbolic representative markers that tie the thread to the past, no matter how little impact it has.
I'm reading black skin white masks by Frantz Fanon. Crazy book
It inspired me to delve a bit into what I remember from the book with additional personal interpretive impact frameworks. I wanted to respond directly to the comment, but the text was somewhat extensive and thought a separate thread was more appropriate (unsure what section to put it in, so I opted for General. Give any suggestions for better designation).
--
"Black Skin, White Masks" is the book where Fanon describes how the socio-cultural and socio-economic hierarchy and standing of his people were set by the standard of prestige from how relatively proximal the French mainland culture impacted his homeland Martinique, right?
I found it interesting how the colonized people adopted social and cultural definitional inventory where everything local, vernacular, or unique from the colonizers was looked at as inferior (for example, creole or even speaking French with an accent), so people that were looked at as respectable, educated, worldly, and sophisticated had to perpetually go toward a self-denying process and "wash" themselves off who they were to then stand on a higher ground amongst their people.
That's why some families would force strict discipline on their children to speak proper French from an early age and make sure to de-incentivize any tendencies toward a colloquial culture for any hope of becoming someone in society. Social mobility was a continuous cultural washing process, deep-rooted in self-hate and self-denial, telling themselves they are only more worthy of dignity through the White man's archetype. An accent or speaking in patois was a mark of stain.
This originated from how the colonial rulers would stratify and make elites out of the ones who approximated them the most, that cultural and social mimicry, showing desperate paradoxical degrading appropriation, was rewarded ascendancy, so this grew firm roots in the internal social advancement and preferential norms for economic climbing.
You can draw the same conclusion on how mixing and having French genetic origin played a part in this internalized perceived White superiority and adoption of other behavioral cues that accompanied the traits of the French man. It's sad how those French Antillians were mentally abused to the point where they preserved it post-colonialism.
And because of this, I speculate one seeks out the dependent satellite nature of one's own people's status as the extension of the dominant hegemony. Isolation or independence means separation and greater distance -- a force that ruptures the paradigm of social existence up to that point, so I can see how one perpetuates the collective secondary constrained ceiling because at least that validates their sense of disadvantaged co-dependency.
Otherwise, they had to redefine their distinct standing, putting themselves at the center and examining their autonomous existence, which is not trouble-free since a resilient social movement has to replace it. The consequences would mean many will fall and be disoriented, lose spirit, and indulge more in self-loathing channeled in various ways while most improve.
The issue of that transitional, costly roadmap can be a strong reason why such places don't seek total economic, institutional, and political sovereignty. Even if they increasingly become self-reliant and eventually self-dependent, you observe that they stick to ritualistic and symbolic representative markers that tie the thread to the past, no matter how little impact it has.