The paper examines two key essays from the 20th century French Caribbean which share a formative function and a common purpose of raising racial and social awareness. After a reflection on the concepts of culture and colonialism, we will look at the classic So spoke the uncle (1928) by Haitian ethnologist Jean Price-Mars as an antecedent of Black Skin, White Masks (1952) by Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Both constitute decolonizing “essays of formation” in which diverse discursive formats –ethnographic research, psychoanalysis–, linked with the authors’ different disciplinary origins, are modulated by a decisive pedagogical function and the predominance of narrative patterns such as the modern novel of formation or Bildungsroman. Read as decolonial lessons, both essays express the urgent need for an education opposed to French “assimilation”, which implies a de-learning of “White” hegemonic ideas, beliefs, and values. As we will see, the development of a decolonizing formative program is furthered by Fanon in a radical way since he not only denounces, as Price-Mars had previously done, the alienation of those who possess black skin and adopt white masks; he also warns against the mystic and enthusiastic négritude which unwillingly falls into the trap of colonialism.
Bonfiglio, F. (2021). Decolonial Paideias: essays of formation in Franco-Antillean Literature. Meridional. Revista Chilena De Estudios Latinoamericanos, (16). https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-4862.2021.61356
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