Through his essay, Frantz Fanon connects the three fundamental features of human existence:

language, projection of the self and recognition of the other. This he relates to the history of
colonialism, racism and imperialism. Since the phenomenon of othering is central to these
three isms, it becomes imperative for Fanon to investigate language. Language authenticates
the existence of an entity as Fanon says it is implicit that to speak is to exist absolutely for
the other. Not simply it determines the being but also the location of the being in power
equations. Which language and to what extent and clarity you use is an indicator of the larger
culture either adopted or imposed. This has serious implications in social as well as personal
realm as the intimate connection between language and human psychology has been
demonstrated by psychologists like Freud.
Fanon particularises these broader concepts on the Negroes from the Antilles and their
infatuation with French language. He explores the inferiority complex and self-division in
these Negroes primarily based on their linguistic issues: whether to cling to native languages
and dialects like Creole or adopt the masters language like French. This establishes the
colour, personality and treatment of the colonised Negroes as different from the colonising
Europeans. As Fanon remarks: The Negro of the Antilles will be proportionately whiter
that is, he will come closer to being a real human beingin direct ratio to his mastery of the
French language. In order to get rid of the inhumane existence and jungle status, the
Negro has to adopt the cultural standards of the coloniser and thus the foreign language too as
Fanon says, To speak means to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.
The stigma of contempt and inferiority (reflected in the child like status of a black) can be
removed only when the Negro talks like a white man just as the French talk like a book.
Through the movement of the Negro in and out of Africa, he moves away from his language
and nearer to masters language. The Negro arriving in France reacts against the myth of the
R-eating man from Martinique by avoiding Creolisms and improving his French diction.
This leads the Negro to breathe pure air of existence in Europe as opposed to being
imprisoned and lost in native land. Along with linguistic changes, the Negro in France
undergoes biological psychological mutations. Starting from the very inception of going to
France to the landing of the newcomer on native land, there is a magical discourse created
around him based on the language difference itself. The newcomer reveals himself at once
with evidences of a dislocation and alienation: he answers only in French, and often he no
longer understands Creole. Since he knows French now, he adopts a critical attitude toward
his compatriots imitating the paternalistic white man. The wearing of European clothes; use
of European furniture and European forms of social intercourse; adorning the Native
language with European expressions; using bombastic phrases in speaking or writing a
European language; all these contribute to a deceptive feeling of equality with the European
and his achievements.
Fanon gives an example of an English doctor talking to a Negro patient in pidgin-nigger and
interprets it as either an attempt to show the Negro that he knows that Negro cannot speak in
proper French or to imprison him within the same stereotypes, to decivilise him. Thus the
Negro remains in a perpetual conflict. Fanon also voices out his discontent with treatment of
Negroes on the basis of a logical argument. Russians and Germans too speak bad French but
for Negro who speaks bad French, it means he has no culture, no civilization, no long
historical past.

For achieving his purpose of disalienation of Negroes, Fanon wants the black man to free
himself of the arsenal of complexes, the archetypes that have been developed by the colonial
environment. This can only be done when the Negroes stop behaving like climbers in quest
for subtleties and refinement of colonisers language.

Black man as acting between apes and human

Tool as well as an expression: language
Empire writing back
Enslaved and ensnared
Unlearn the accent of native tongue
Air of superiority
Degrees of cultural hegemony in hierarchal setup
Language as a class dimension
Infantalisation of black man
Popular dominant culture and movies
Interiorised divide
Post colonial vs colonial
Perception vs language politics
Achebe n gugi access which is external while fanon psychology of the colonised, mind
Not concerned with questions of lang policy
Complex: psychoanalysis
Fanon: doctor, psychiatrist
While achebe gugi writers and question of program for African lit, linguistic history and
education
The individual to community: shifting from western tradition of psychoanalysis, not
individual history reveal the larger history of alienation, though the complexes may manifest
in individual
Two axis black man relationship with metropolis and white man: inferiority complex
Rlnsp with black men who is looking towards France and who has not
Philo and intelligence have been used to employed to enslave men

Dismantles the conception of education model too, problematised , education used as colonial
motif, even slavery as education: what should be the lang of education? Decolonisation
debate between Achebe and Ngugi
Self-knowledge to be promoted: upper levels of consciousness: classic model of
psychoanalysis