ABSTRACT
In this passage it is possible to detect in Fanon's voice a note of despair, a sense of emotional nullity which wells up, filling to repletion that void left over after the dissipation of rage, a gesture of resignation before some oppressive fate, faceless and ineluctable, which closes upon him with the air of a massive finality. This sense of abjection is precipitated by the crushing recognition that cultural oppression is a phenomenon that inhabits every space and is always ahead of every encounter with it, a huge presence that obliterates brightness for a ubiquitous funereal pallor, an insuperable subjection to tyranny and this precisely because the white Frenchman concedes equality to the subaltern. This apparent paradox constitutes what will be termed in this chapter the problem of virtual alterity.
