What does Fanon mean when he says that, unlike the Jew, he is enslaved to his own appearance, and not merely to an idea?
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The Jew 'is not wholly what he is'. This emphasises the notion of Judaism as an ethno-religion, a unity under common ground of ancestry and religion, and therefore something that is not identified from across a room. The 'debatable characteristics' an Ashkenazi Jew might have are bypassed by their whiteness in any social setting. Fanon contrasts this to the Black man's 'fixed' status in the 'only real' eyes of white people, listing how he is instantly subjected to racial categorisation. The objectification prevents Black people from being seen as fully human by the colonial society, in contrast to the relative invisibility that Jews may experience. The quote 'I am overdetermined from without' signifies being constrained into a set of preconceived notions about who they are, imposed by a racist social structure. He contrasts this to being 'overdetermined from the inside', citing that it is the Jew's behaviours that are judged. Their exterior allows them agency and allows their identity framework through the eyes of others to be broader.
I found it interesting to compare this reading to Yousef's 'Tell My Story', where she uses visual storytelling to recount Black resilience and history. Yousef's line 'Press hard against my scalp like she’s trying to brush the black out’ echoes Fanon's discussion of being 'enslaved to his own appearance' and overdetermined by external forces. Both reflect the psychological and physical burden placed on Black people by a society that devalues their Blackness and tries to mould them into something more acceptable or less threatening to the dominant white gaze. In the music video, the child winces away from the camera as her grandmother tugs at her hair, left with a 'red forehead' and a damaged self-concept of what it means to be Black. Fanon's idea of being 'overdetermined from without' links to the themes of Black resistance in Yousef's song. Both Fanon and Yousef highlight the weight of history that Black bodies carry, with an emphasis on the possibility of reclamation in a world that seeks to define Blackness from the outside.