In “The Fact of Blackness,” an excerpt from Black Skins, White Masks, Franz Fanon discusses how Black people are viewed by white allies and by people who take pity on them, challenging both the assumption that there is nothing unique about Black people and the assumption that there is something deficient about Black people.

Fanon refers to Jean-Paul Sartre, an ally, who asserts that Black people are the same as any other working-class people, thus erasing the uniqueness of the Black identity and the struggles undergone by Black people. Fanon writes: “[…] he was reminding me that my blackness was only a minor term. […] Jean-Paul Sartre had forgotten that the Negro suffers in his body quite differently from the white man. […]” (1359). This refers to the centuries of structural discrimination and oppression suffered by Black people that makes the Black experience fundamentally different from the experiences of white people. While it is true that working-class white people have their own struggles, it would be intellectually dishonest to claim that Black people do not uniquely suffer on account of their race, something that white working-class people do not have to experience. This is something that is relevant even today, not just when it comes to the opinions of white liberals but also with regard to the people who claim that there is no such thing as systemic/structural discrimination. The history of oppression of Black people has to be taken into account before naively and insensitively claiming that there is a level playing ground and anyone can achieve upward mobility through hard work. In the racialized American society, there are various other factors with regard to race that need to be considered before coming to conclusions such as this.

While Fanon makes a strong case in favor of the struggles that the Black experience comes with, he strongly asserts that such challenges do not constitute shortcomings. He says: “[…] I refuse to accept that amputation. I feel in myself a soul as immense as the world, truly a soul as deep as the deepest of rivers, my chest has the power to expand without limit” (1360). He takes pride of his Black identity even as he stresses the systemic discrimination that Black people experience in white-dominated societies.

Fanon’s positions have a lot of relevance in American society today. We need to celebrate literature, art, cinema, and music by Black people. We need to make the teaching and learning of history more comprehensive so that the rich history of Black people is included in it. This will help students learn more about the unique challenges faced by African American people while also acknowledging their contributions to American society. The fact that systemic/structural discrimination exists needs to be understood so that people realize that the existing socio-economic structure is not working for everyone and for people to have equal access to opportunities, a lot of things need to be fundamentally changed and reshaped and for that we need to understand the roots of the many inequalities we find in American society.

In “Society Must Be Defended,” Foucault delves into the complicated web of power dynamics that shape society. One of the central distinctions he draws is between “disciplinary” power and “biopolitics,” each with its own distinct characteristics, objectives, and techniques.

As Foucault describes it, disciplinary power focuses on individual bodies and their regulation. It seeks to control and normalize behavior through surveillance, examination, and punishment. The central object of disciplinary power is the individual body, which is subjected to various techniques such as panopticism, where individuals are aware they may be under constant observation, leading to self-regulation.

The modern prison system is an example of disciplinary power at work. Inmates are subjected to strict routines, constant surveillance, and disciplinary measures to control their behavior and conform to societal norms. The panoptic design of many prisons ensures that inmates are always potentially under observation, leading to self-discipline.

On the other hand, biopolitics, according to Foucault, is concerned with populations rather than individuals. It focuses on managing and controlling life processes, such as birth rates, mortality rates, and overall health. The central object of biopolitics is the population, which is governed through techniques such as the regulation of healthcare, social policies, and interventions aimed at improving the overall well-being of the population.

An example of biopolitics can be seen in public health campaigns. Governments and health organizations implement policies and programs to improve the health and well-being of the population as a whole, such as vaccination campaigns, health education programs, and regulations on food and drug safety.

In conclusion, Foucault’s distinction between disciplinary power and biopolitics sheds light on the complex nature of power dynamics in society. While disciplinary power focuses on individual bodies and behavior, biopolitics looks at populations and life processes. Understanding these concepts helps us analyze and critique the various ways in which power operates in society and shapes our lives.

    In “Can the Subaltern Speak?”,  Spivak introduces the exploration of power dynamics and representation using colonial and postcolonial contexts. She critiques Western intellectual discourse for often marginalizing the voices of the marginalized, whom she refers as “subaltern.” Spivak argues that the act of speaking for the subaltern can inadvertently reinforce existing power structures rather than empower them. She elaborates on the complexities of representation and the challenges of giving voice to the subaltern with Western frameworks. This introduction lays the groundwork for Spivak’s analysis of the subaltern’s and the ways in which their voices are silenced or appropriated by dominant power structures. She states “I cannot entirely endorse this insistence on determinate vigor and full autonomy, for practical historiographic examples will not allow such endorsements to privilege subaltern consciousness”. In this quotation she is discussing the tension between the desire for clear, definitive narratives and the acknowledgment of the complexities and limitations of representing subaltern voices. Spivak cautions against fully endorsing the emphasis on depicting the subaltern with determinate vigor and full autonomy in historical terms. She highlights the practical challenges within historiography, such as incomplete historical records and the influence of dominant power structures, which complicate efforts to privilege subaltern consciousness. Spivak emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the complexities and limitations inherent in representing subaltern voices within dominant discourses while cautioning against simplistic or romanticized portrayals.” As for the receiver, we must ask who is ‘the real receiver’ of an ‘insurgency?’ The historian, transforming ‘insurgency’ into ‘text for knowledge,’ is only one ‘receiver’ of any collectively intended social act.” Spivak questions the identity of the true recipient of an “insurgency” and suggests that historians, who transform such acts into textual knowledge, are just one among many potential recipients. She emphasizes the other perspectives involved in interpreting collective social actions and highlights the role of historians in transforming these actions into knowledge, which stands out as it challenges another interpretation. 

In the passage The Fact of Blackness shows different strategies in this book. Some of the strategies are resistance and rebellion because the Black fought against colonial oppression as a means of asserting their identity and reclaiming their humanity. Another strategy is cultural affirmation by embracing the black culture, traditions and heritage that can be a powerful strategy for making their identity. There is also giving access to education and knowledge about history, culture and the context of racism in the Black community.

There is also building networks with different communities to bring collective strength to form different alliances to bring support in the Black community.  There is also engaging in different forms of self expression and creativity such as writing, music and visual arts. There is also a big importance of phycological liberation from the oppression by colonialism. The last biggest strategy is getting involved in political movements and efforts to make difficult decisions’ by challenging the systemic injustice and advocating for equality and liberty. These are some of the different strategies in the Black community and cultural.

There  are some problems that arise after Fanon puts the white man in his place”.  Some of the problems is because in a society such as ours industrialized to the highest degree, dominated by scientism, there is no longer degree dominated by scientism, there is no longer room for your sensitivity. This quote explains that is racism and black community have a huge struggle in the community for based on everything in basic life. These are some of the problems that arise after Fanon put the person in their place.

From “Wretched of the Earth”, philosopher, Frantz Fanon, studies the affect colonial domination has on national culture. When a colonizer occupies on a country, there are two sorts of reactions: The native, chooses to maintain “intact traditions” and the intellectual, instead moves towards the new culture (1361). The mass natives takes like a pause with their culture and don’t produce or keep going with it. If they do, they are at risk of losing it more rather than saving it. So they choose to maintain it as it is and try to at least keep it going within themselves and untouched, even by constant pushing from the colonizers. Meanwhile, the intellectual “frantically”, chooses to integrate into this new culture and opened to leaving behind theirs. In their defense, this may be in means of survival, giving in instead of facing constant rebuttal, or as a result of their culture being so oppressed, that they “realize” that the colonizers culture may be the more “sophisticated” than theirs. This statement comes to show how not all the natives of the nation have the same response to colonization and more so, why colonizers have struggle to dominate an entire nation. For the most part, it isn’t the physical attack like a large army, but the influence, especially, the effect upon culture, that allows complete take over a country.

This then brings over to a more positive note on colonization. Since there is this different approach between the two natives; there is one group that emerges as a result and that is the key player to moving a colonized nation to fight back. Fanon calls this group the native intellectual, who are like a mix of the two. They are the ones that take in this new culture, but instead of promoting the colonizers, they change it for their benefit and use it to reach out towards their own people (1363). The native intellectual represents their people and aims to encourage them to push forward towards building something more of their own culture. This is where we get most literature that, use similar literary styles of the colonizer, but shape it to write their own work. Then, the people are taught new views and motivated for uprising, which most likely, led to revolts and fighting back for freedom (1365). We saw this same cycle occur a lot through colonized countries and are always initiated by this same group Fanon speaks of. Another example, that well, doesn’t exactly involve colonization, but I found alike to this cycle, is a poem I read in a Latinx Lit. class, “I am Joaquin”. The epic poem is written by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales and I remember how intriguing it was that Gonzales used poetry, specifically, the style form of the epic, to push Chicanos to protest during the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. I think its also interesting how colonizers have this image that the colonized country lacks any sense of culture. Many “white” Americans looked down on Chicanos saying how they didn’t know anything of the arts yet, Gonzalez was the example they very well did and even used it against them. The native intellectual aims to do just that: prove the colonizer wrong while “awakening the native’s sensibility,” and “make unreal…the acceptance of defeat,” (1365).

We often speak of ideology as synonymous with beliefs or ideals or principles. You’ll hear people say someone is spewing a “harmful” ideology or that they are “ideologically” opposed to this or that. Yet what is lost in this common, general conception of ideology is that any ideological position is in of itself a form of ideology. The Marxist, the liberal, the conservative, the centrist all take ideological positions that come to inform a broader system of ideology. This is perhaps keenly seen in Louis Althusser’s conception of the ISA (Ideological State Apparatus).

For Louis Althusser, societies formulate social structures on the basis of “reproduction of the conditions of production”. One way of thinking about it is the way in which many urban areas are designed, where in times past the serf was allocated a plot of land in which he could rest or raise his family, the industrial workers of the mid to late 19th century lived in overpacked cities with a sort of hub where production took place. Of course with a change in productive capacities  came a change in the reproduction of the conditions of production. These conditions are of course maintained through wages, as enough earnings from their labor power goes into survival, but not enough to simply move on. Subsistence is perhaps an appropriate word. 

These processes are facilitated by the ruling class, and by extension the state. Althusser, on the state says;

“Let me first clarify one important point: the State (and its existence in its  apparatus) has no meaning except as a function of State power. The whole of the political class struggle revolves around the State…”(1290)

 and later clarifying

 “In order to advance the theory of the State it is indispensable to take into account not only the distinction between State power and State apparatus, but also another reality which is clearly on the side of the (repressive) State apparatus, but must not be confused with it. I shall call this reality by its concept: the ideological State apparatuses.” (1291)

He sets up the State as not necessarily a separate entity in of itself, but the means in which the holders of the means of production impose its will upon the masses. That will of course be the reproduction of the conditions of production. State power is simply this notion that it is a will that is being imposed whilst the state apparatus is the mechanism that provide the means in which state power can be enacted. Take state power to be the rod gun, and the state apparatus to be the barn where the sheep are held, the system that labels and organizes the sheep into units, the farmers who facilitate the breeding of new sheep, and so on. This repressive state apparatus is of course to us brutal and imposing and inhumane. Yet Althusser sees another state apparatus appear, in which the subjugation is far more complex.

The Repressive State Apparatus(RSA) enacts it’s violence through the military, through the police, or through the judicial system. All these means by which people are “kept in place” are necessarily violent, coercive, or punitive. Yet as Althusser explains the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA)  does not need to be violent, insofar that it is explicitly violent , it can self actualize and self regulate  its mission within each and every individual. The most indicative ISA is the school and of it Althusser says ;

“It takes children from every class at infant-school age, and then for years, the years in which the child is most ‘vulnerable’, squeezed between the family State apparatus and the educational State apparatus, it drums into them, whether it uses new or old methods, a certain amount of ‘know-how’ wrapped in the ruling ideology (French, arithmetic, natural history, the sciences, literature) or simply the ruling ideology in its pure state (ethics, civic instruction, philosophy). Somewhere around the age of sixteen, a huge mass of children are ejected ‘into production’: these are the workers or small peasants. Another portion of scholastically adapted youth carries on: and, for better or worse, it goes somewhat further, until it falls by the wayside and fills the posts of small and middle technicians, white-collar workers, small and middle executives, petty bourgeois of all kinds. A last portion reaches the summit, either to fall into intellectual semi-employment, or to provide, as  well as the ‘intellectuals of the collective labourer’, the agents of exploitation (capitalists, managers), the agents of repression (soldiers, policemen, politicians, administrators, etc.) and the professional ideologists (priests of all sorts, most of whom are convinced ‘laymen’) ” (Althusser 1296).

The school is the prime ISA because like stated previously it builds within the mind of each person the ability to reproduce the conditions of reproduction, by making it seem as if it is “natural” or “a rite of passage” or “virtuous”. ISAs carve you ,psychologically, into molds which you can or cannot fit. Most importantly ISAs don’t really care if you don’t conform, as he says that those who fall into the waysides still are accounted for and get assimilated into other ISAs. 

Think of perhaps a caricature of the dichotomous relationship between like a blue collar worker and a snooty intellectual. The blue collar worker sees the intellectual as some prissy metropolitan, who doesn’t do anything productive, whilst the intellectual sees the blue collar as some grunt doing somebody else’s busy work, while they are working in a sophisticated , prestigious field. This is precisely what the ISAs do. Ideology represents these imagined relations as it’s prime goal.” Not all is lost to doom and dread !” perhaps you may say. You may say that realizing that these relations are imaginary and getting back to the roots of the real conditions of existence is what matters. I hate to burst anyone’s bubble but Althusser’s main point at the end of it all is that, in a sense, everything is ideology.

His term for this is interpolation. Interpolation is the means by which an individual is encoded, and stamped by ideology. I believe he uses the example of a police officer hailing you down and saying “You! Yes you!” and the almost intuitive, hypnotic sense in which you recognize yourself in that hail. This is to turn the individual into a subject. As a subject you can now be subjected. Your subjectification towards the Subject. Then a cluster of recognitions between the subject, the Subject, the process of subjectification, and most crucially myself in the subject. That is ,to put it in more concrete terms, there is no escape for ideology because as soon as a stamp is placed upon me marking me as a thing, I become a subject.

From the very moment we are brought forth into this world, we are under everyone’s scrutiny. Through a professional standpoint, doctors need to observe and run examinations on babies to ensure that they are in a healthy state. On a social level, physical features of babies get noted and, as we grow older, our appearances tend to define us (physiognomy). This becomes problematic when society turns certain aspects or features into something considered undesirable or lesser than. In his essay The Fact of Blackness, Frantz Fanon illustrates the harrowing experience of being black in a white dominated, racist society. With this essay being written in 1952, it was published in a post Harlem renaissance American society. The Harlem Renaissance (situated in New York City) could be considered a golden age for African American culture involving music, art, dance, and of course, literature. While Fanon and the renaissance did not see any specific overlap, it would not have been impossible for him to receive some inspiration from the movement. His work and the movement also point to the upheaval of more people of color speaking out against systemic racism, a nice optimistic viewpoint as opposed to the world Fanon depicts in his writing. Fanon describes the experience of oppression from the perspective of a black person. They become aware of their blackness through the white gaze. A dichotomy between the white gaze and black gaze becomes apparent. Due to how prominent and ingrained racist notions are in society, it is nearly impossible for someone to live as a black person and ignore the white gaze. It can be seen in media and culture due to how people of color get portrayed. This white gaze is also very crucial for perpetuating these negative views of black people and even internalizing these beliefs into black people themselves. When describing this gaze, Fanon writes “his metaphysics, or, less pretentiously, his customs and the sources on which they were based, were wiped out because they were in conflict with a civilization that he did not know and that imposed itself on him.” Fanon’s writing here reads almost like a body horror piece. The idea of not being able to view yourself as yourself or view yourself as anything other than an inferior being is traumatizing to say the least and incredibly detrimental to anyone’s mental or physical well-being. In his writing, Fanon is able to brilliantly articulate this experience to push forward his message of how black people truly are oppressed and need to be fighting back against the white gaze and the narratives it entails. 

“I cannot entirely endorse this insistence of determinate vigor and full autonomy, for practical historiographic exigencies will not allow such endorsements to privilege subaltern consciousness.”

Spivak wonderfully tasks at grappling the deeply troubling & demeaning epistemic violence throughout intellectual or taxonomic research. Undoubtedly, previous visions suggest that subaltern is in fact, by essence, the subaltern in all aspects, whether or not they consent. To converse with each other is to grasp this tragedy at hand, the hierarchy of reason and personhood leads to the ineffable order of power. How these orders unfold. But the means of labeling create the labels too, and the thought process goes to the wayside, as the subaltern will remain in that indescribable void as long as those systems are fixed in place. 

Spivak cites the heterogeneous nature of indigenous liaisons that speak for “colonized subalterns” to “first world intellectuals”. I believe the liaison, for purpose of argument, straddles between being necessary and malignant to their culture. The taxonomic behavior of addressing the divisions of power and the underlying character traits, move to secern “difference from the elites”. Of course the sense of the elite is preconceived and noted, so its not an estrangement to decipher. The patterns or algorithms of the elite carry a blue print superimposed on each demographic, zoning out the outliers for labeling, study and silence. This structure of “understanding” could have merit if it sought to give voice to all people by subsequent removal of the labels, oppression.

Who is one to order a voice from those who wish not to defend themselves, esp. by their own volition? To be colonized and oppressed requires no need to defense, the defense is a given. What’s undoubtedly a humane rite of passage to exist, without reason, struggles against those who consider their findings of the colonized as ‘subjugated knowledge…“a whole set of knowl­edges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naive knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity”, a double quote from Spivak’s argument. But the institution of colonization ignored the rite of passage to silently exist without selfhood elaborations, all in expectancy for their personhood (and subsequent juxtaposed status) to be on the record.

I see this strangely align with the sense of sharing one’s art to the public. Your label as an artist relies on those you share your work with. They assume the role to define and defend your work. IF your work has to speak for you, what if you don’t wish for your art to be judged or tiered, hung in museums or honored by those who stole from you/yours. Why must your identity be defined by those who oppress you?

Spivak’s writing brings to mind fundamental questions of hegemonic ethics and morals in place, garnering a vital revisitation of normative voices regarding women, indigenous cultures, those esteemed as the elite.. Spivak’s insights relieve the burden of complacent configurations reassumed by each id of a delirious populous who ignores who they built their sense of entitlement above.

For Foucault, there are two models of sovereignty that represent different modes of power. The first, which came earliest chronologically, is “discipline”, whose object is the individual, controlled through microphysical methods. One example of disciplinary power would be the ways surveillance manifests itself, especially, as Foucault says, in the sphere of labor. Overall, the point of disciplinary sovereignty is to “let live and make die”. In this way, the sovereign’s ultimate display of power is in the act of death. From this view, death almost had to be a spectacle because it was the visualization of “a transition from one power to another”. Death is the marked passing of our bodies from one sovereign who can let our bodies live or make them die, to another with the same power over our soul. The second, newer, form of power–the way I see it–is almost insidious in the way it seeps into every aspect of modern life without us really noticing it. This sovereign power is biopolitical. It is the focus of power over population through standardized means. Examples of this could include medicine–which I think serves as a good example of biopolitics’ sweeping nature as a power. Medicine basically started out as people learning hygiene, which led to institutions like hospitals, and ultimately we have grandiose schemes of life insurance, health insurance, medicare and medicaid. Not only this, but medicine and hygiene education itself can be forms of population control–the focus of biopolitical power. The premise of this new power of sovereignty is intervention: to make live and let die. Consequently, this differentiates the extent of the sovereign power especially when it comes to death. Death becomes something shameful under this new regime, because with all these means to prolong life, to improve life circumstances/chances/outcomes, we can’t escape death. On top of it all, death is something that becomes prolonged and ambiguous. It is not a spectacle from one sovereign to another, but a secret and confusing embarrassment, that lies outside of the power of the biopolitical sovereign. 

Maybe it is possible to interpret this change in in the concept of power, life and death from something disciplinary to something biopolitical as a shift in cultural expectations as well. In a world no longer totally reliant on teachings of religious institutions, there is no longer a real reason for life or death to be politically represented in ways reminiscent of religion. With biopolitical power, we all have this force urging us to live, but maybe more room for how to define death. I recognize that this gets super dicey when actually examining what real choices we have when it comes to death–the law says one thing and our society might say another, or we don’t have any real means to die the way we wish, or whatever other reason. Overall though, if we see forms of power as fluid and responsive to the values of society, since after all we “contracted” to the sovereign and they are (allegedly) supposed to serve us, it might be interesting to see how else power will change in the future as cultures and contracts change, too.