On Fanonian Slips

Chapter 4 “On Fanonian Slips” parlays my engagement with Fanon to theorize Fanonian slips as the misfires that may occur in communicative situations demonstrating the operation of racial icons on the level of the interpersonal, political, and internal. The chapter also moves beyond Fanon by further engaging Hortense Spillers’ call for a new “psychoanalytic culture criticism” and digging into Fanon’s owns slippages in relation to his theorizing of gender and sexuality. Fanonian slips highlight how different speaking subjects draw on the broader treasure chest that is racial iconography (the Symbolic) and, according to communicative context, mix-and-match those icons into combinations to produce mutual recognition (the Imaginary). Each combination is unique requiring attention to context and contingency balanced with an understanding of the imposed cultural domain of the white mask. Here, Black iconoclasm manifests as a critical practice that can be taken up within the flow of lived experience and culture.