Page 17 - BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASK

xvi BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS

transformed into a mighty river into which all Other histories
fl ow and merge as mere minor and irrelevant tributaries. What
Fanon detects in human sciences applies equally to social sciences.
Anthropology was developed specifi cally to describe, manage
and contain the black man. Political science places white man
at the apex and is deeply Eurocentric. Science and Empire went
hand in hand: the consequent racial economy of science, where
its benefi ts accrue primarily to the rich developed nations and
its negative consequences are suffered largely by the developing
countries, are patently plain. What Fanon says about the comics of
the 1950s, the magazines are put together by white men for little
white men, with their white heroes and evil black villains, works
just as effectively in the way disciplines are taught, discourses are
promoted, and knowledge is advanced. In all these areas there is
a constellation of postulates, a series of propositions that slowly
and subtly … work their way into one’s mind and shape one’s
view of the world. All these disciplines and discourses are the
products of a culture which sees itself hierarchically at the top of
the ladder of civilization; they postulate all that the world contains
and all that the world has produced and produces, is by and for
the white man. This is why it is taken as an a priori given that the
white man is the predestined master of this world.
But the dominance of western culture, and its globalization
through this dominance, should not be confused with universalism.
Just because a particular discipline or a discourse is accepted or
practiced throughout the world, it does not mean that discipline or
discourse is universally valid and applicable to all societies. After
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all, as I have written elsewhere, burgers and coke are eaten and
drunk throughout the world but one would hardly classify them
as universally embraced, healthy and acceptable food: what the
presence of burgers and coke in every city and town in the world
demonstrate is not their universality but the power and dominance
of the culture that produced them. The same logic applies to
disciplines and discourses. When Fanon talks of universalism he
is not talking of the alleged universalism of western dominance
which is a product of European history, emerges from western

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