Black Speaking Subjects: Frantz Fanon’s Critique of Coloniality of Language in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology

Abstract

We propose that Frantz Fanon’s analysis of language develops an immanent critique of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Fanon transforms the phenomenological method to account for the Black speaking subjects’ experience through a sociogenic account of language. First, while the French colonial language has a robust diachronic dimension, the language of the colonized, Creole, is relegated to a synchrony without diachrony, as the historical past is erased. Second, while French metropolitan intersubjectivity is modelled on harmonious reciprocity and reflects continuity between the family and the state, relations between dominant and subjugated speaking subjects employ paternalism and primitivism that reinforce coloniality. We develop the notion of a racialized and historicized language-schema to capture Fanon’s analysis and envisage future critical phenomenologies of language.

Keywords

• Fanon (Frantz)
• Merleau-Ponty (Maurice)
• speaking subject
• phenomenology
• Saussure’s semiology
• coloniality