Visual Skin, Virtual Masks: Frantz Fanon’s Legacy and the Caribbean

• Main Author: E. Anthony Hurley
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Stockholm University Press 2015-11-01
• Series: Karib
• Online Access: https://www.karib.no/articles/31

This essay explores the question of Frantz Fanon’s relevance to the contemporary Caribbean in the context of his views, articulated in 'Peau noire, masques blancs' and 'Les Damnés de la terre', on the psychological legacy of the violence of colonialism and his proposed solution for psychological and political decolonization. In the 21st century context, technological advances in the area of communication extend the promise of a brave new world, which minimizes or even erases the importance of an individual’s visual (visible) persona. Drawing on illustrations from his native land of Barbados, as a territory with a history of colonization similar to that of Fanon’s native Martinique, this author offers insights into Fanon’s importance to contemporary generations of Caribbean people emerging in the context of a globalized, virtual environment that, while diminishing the significance of the visual in relation to the skin color of individuals, tends to mask the persistence of new permutations of neo-colonial, racialized ideologies.