ABSTRACT
Colonial desire, for Fanon, operates uni-directionally. Only black folks shoulder its burden,
often resorting to what he called ‘hallucinatory whitening’ (Fanon, 1952/1967, p. 100). They
develop a psychopathology of race, alienation, and other neuroses; in contrast, whites seem to
benefit only from colonial desire. They can pick and choose, dismiss and disregard, at will.
Fanon did not consider that white men and women could suffer from similar hallucinations,
pathologies, alienations, and neuroses about race-or that black folks could admire, appreciate,
and desire one another. For Fanon, the binary of race and gender remains fixed. ‘The white man
is sealed in his whiteness. The black man in his blackness’ (Fanon, 1952/1967, p. 9). And due to
such fixity, Fanon could offer only one option for emancipation: ‘What I insist on is that the
poison [whiteness] must be eliminated once and for all’ (Fanon, 1952/1967, p. 62).
