GRGR 31 Shit'n'Shinola (is Re: Eminem (was: Influenced by GR?)

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 30 Jul 2000, Dave Monroe wrote:

> ... aw, hell, you know, I was going to risk Sartre here (and maybe Kojeve),
 but, as I
> recall, Fanon took some issue with Sartre on the issue (which is where I
 think FF
> starts in on the subject), and I figured somebody or another was going to
 nail me for
> bringing him up light of that.   And I was particularly concerned to get
 to the issue
> of race, as something clicked in re: C.L.R. James.  Besides, not only can
 I not recall
> J-PS coming up in re: Pynchon (though that's hardly to say I'm much familiar
 with the
> prodigious output of the Pynchonian exegesis industry), I couldn't say off
 the top of
> my head just where Sartre discusses the matter, either
 (Being and Nothingness, is
> uppose, would have been a good guess, if only by virtue of volume,
 but ... but I can

Fanon was a psychoanalyst though he eventually joined the FLN and became a
full time revolutionary. His primary approach to race was psychological
although he did not wish to neglect the economic and social aspects. His
relations with Sartre could not have been too bad since Sartre published
Fanon's final writings I do believe. Sartre also mined the 
psychoanalytic vein on occasion. Fanon quotes Sartre in F's essay on the
Algerian veil. Fanon says, "The contents of the dreams of Europeans
brings out other special themes. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his Reflections Sur
la Question Juive, has shown that on the level of the unconsicious, the
Jewish woman almost always has an aura of rape about her." This fit in
nicely with Fanon's views on the French approach to maintaining Algerian
colonialism. It is totally obvious of course that such writings of
both men would be grist for Pynchon's mill with regard to the the
Roseland sections--the psychonanalytic aspects of racism and
colonialism. In reading these sectons of GR we of course keep firmly in
mind the weaknesses of the psychoananalytic approach as well as its
strengths. Makes for some of the best writing of the book.

			P.